What's happening in space (that's interesting)

[Ginger_Yellow]

Should have just taken an Atari Lynx up. That would discharge any battery sharpish.

[Pyperkub]

The Universe is always celebrating Halloween!

Jack-o'-lantern Nebula grimaces on the edge of the Milky Way

[playingwithknives]

Jack O Lantern?

I see this, far more demonic

/plays metal riff

[YakAttack]

It could be goatse too if you squint real hard.

[schurem]

Astronomy is a rohrschacht test and you… should not be around small children lol

[YakAttack]

I like to look for shapes in clouds.

[Jason_Levine]

First flight (abort system test) of the Boeing Starliner.

See Boeing's Starliner spacecraft hit 650 mph in 5 seconds

[antlers]

Missing from the CNET story is that one of Starliner’s three parachutes failed to deploy.

[YakAttack]

Who cares about parachutes? We need rockets!

[ineffablebob]

Interstellar space even weirder than expected, NASA probe reveals

The heliosphere’s outermost edge, called the heliopause, marks the start of interstellar space. Understanding this threshold has implications for our picture of the sun’s journey through the galaxy, which in turn can tell us more about the situations of other stars scattered across the cosmos.

“We are trying to understand the nature of that boundary, where these two winds collide and mix,” Stone said during the briefing. “How do they mix, and how much spillage is there from inside to outside the bubble, and from outside the bubble to inside?”

Scientists got their first good look at the heliopause on August 25, 2012, when Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space. What they began to see left them scratching their heads. For instance, researchers now know that the interstellar magnetic field is about two to three times stronger than expected, which means, in turn, that interstellar particles exert up to ten times as much pressure on our heliosphere than previously thought.

“It is our first platform to actually experience the interstellar medium, so it is quite literally a pathfinder for us,” says heliophysicist Patrick Koehn, a program scientist at NASA headquarters.

The Voyagers continue to deliver. And they haven’t even learned to talk to whales yet!

[abidingdude]

Looks like there’s a SpaceX launch tomorrow morning:

SpaceX (SpaceX)

[Baconsoda]

[RichVR]

That is very cool. Thanks.

So different axial tilts… Caught from outside? Collisions? Aliens? :)

[Baconsoda]

Conservation of angular momentum of the planets during the formation of our solar system? Angular momentum is always the go-to answer in orbital science :p. Some collisions may have affected its tilt axis too.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-and-how-do-planets-ro/

[YakAttack]

There’s something wrong with ur anus. (And pluto.)

[sillhouette]

Sit on it and rotate

[Ginger_Yellow]

Huh. I knew about Venus, but Uranus and Pluto are surprising to me. Pluto less so since it’s so eccentric anyway.

[vinraith]

Collisions during the earliest eras of the solar system, most likely. Everything would have originally formed with the same rotational orientation (counterclockwise as seen from celestial north) so subsequent interactions would need to be responsible for peculiarities like Venus and Uranus.

@Baconsoda that’s a nice animated image, I’ve usually used a static one for this in my classes but may have to drop this into future presentations.

[antlers]

You can catch the transit of Mercury live for a few more hours. I tried with my solar-filtered binoculars but couldn’t see anything; I think you need more magnification than my 10x35s provide.

SpaceX launched their next batch of 60 Low-Earth Orbit internet satellites today. They used a first-stage booster that’s flown three times before, and re-used a payload fairing for the first time.

[YakAttack]

Stupid question maybe, but is SpaceX making a profit yet? I figure (probably for dumb reasons) that until they make a profit they are at risk of being snubbed in favor of Boeing for no other reason than simple favoritism. (Or reasons like, “OMG! Musk smoked a joint on Internet!!”)