schurem
3370
California Perineum Cancer as Seen from Space!
rei
3371
Sorry all I was thinking inner space
Ephraim
3372
Well, I mean, the photons from the Sun that are providing the much needed anal energy blast are coming from space. And Iâm interested! So I think itâs a perfect fit for this thread.
jpinard
3373
Maybe it should be in the âWhatâs the worst that could happenâ threadâŠ
Ephraim
3374
There was something in the article about second degree burnsâŠ
jpinard
3376
I love data that reinforces current theory, but did anyone really think our solar system was unique?
Hard to say with a sample size of 1! Which is why Iâm excited any time we get some hard evidence from outside our own system.
Matt_W
3378
Space Time just did a 3-video series on the anthropic principle, which discusses the ideas around this question in depth:
But people (and Jesus) are in it, itâs so unique, and interstellar comets should be totally different because of this.
:derp:
Having an interstellar comet entering our solar system just proves that the simulation CPU has maybe been overclocked a THz or two.
When They get around to throwing some more cores in maybe weâll get coherent signals from Alpha Centauri. I hope I have enough cycles left to see that happen.
antlers
3381
The weird thing to me is why we have spotted two interstellar comets in the last couple of years.
Weâve been seeing comets and calculating their orbits for centuries, and while some have had orbits that are damn near parabolic, weâve never seen these hyperbolic orbits before.
Yes, we are better at detecting comets now than we ever have been, but are we that much better? This paper from 2005 predicts that from the data existing then a survey that got down to 24th magnitude might at best detect 1-2 interstellar comets in 5 years. The first interstellar visitor was discovered by Pan-STARRS as the paper suggests might happen, but was odd in a number of unanticipated ways. The second interstellar visitor is a more standard-issue comet, but is clearly bright enough to have been found by the comet hunters of previous decades.
Oumamouma was odd, but if itâs brightness was representative of interstellar visitors it is no mystery why we havenât spotted any before now. If 2I/Borisov on the other hand is representative of interstellar visitors, why havenât we seen many more before now?
Or are they both unrepresentative in some way? Why would we see two oddballs in a period of two years?
dtolman
3382
Small nit - weâve spotted two interstellar OBJECTS. No one knows the nature of Ê»Oumuamua. 2I/Borisov is the first definitive comet.
We just donât have a good enough sample size to answer your questions. 2I/Borisov wasnât even found by a modern robotic survey - it was found by a dedicated Amateur. Amateurs now have access to technology that dwarf what even professionals could do even a few decades ago in terms of automation and detection, thanks to rapid advances in CCDs, and software to process them.
Credit: https://www.paulschmitphotography.com/
âWeâve all seen sunrises and sunsets. And, weâve all seen moonrises and moonsets. But, how often does one get to witness a âgalaxysetâ in breathtaking terrain?
Here, we see the Andromeda galaxy and her sister galaxies setting behind Engineer Mountain, a 13k-foot peak in southern Colorado. Capturing this image took two months of research and planning, a 9-hour round-trip drive, nearly 3 hours of setup and execution in bone-chilling, 15-degree weather.
As I stood out on the side of the road watching the blurry puff of 2.5-million-year-old starlight set behind the mountain, I couldnât help but wonder if someone else in a far off civilization in the other galaxy was watching a similar scene unfold from their perspective, with the Milky Way setting behind some alien landscape."
8/10 attempt, no starlinks leaving streak marks in the sky.
Matt_W
3386
I thought at first that image must be fake because thereâs no way Andromeda looks that large in the sky, but I was apparently wrong. It really is about twice as wide as the moon and about 6 times as long.
There are some large nebulae that are like that too.
One of the Starlink satellites in the next batch of 60 that SpaceX plans to launch in late December will be treated with a special coating designed to make the spacecraft less reflective and less likely to interfere with space observations, SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said Dec. 6.
Good news, maybe? If they really do take it seriously? But this little bit:
Shotwell admitted that nobody in the company anticipated the problem when the satellites were first designed.
âNo one thought of this,â she said. âWe didnât think of it. The astronomy community didnât think of it.â
I find that very hard to believe.
dtolman
3389
Photographically (and it is an Awesome photograph, in the historical sense of the word).
To my eye, Iâve never seen it look anywhere near that big under dark skies. Usually its a fuzzy blob thats waaaayyyyy dimmer than the moon - though I can not tell you how big it is in comparison (a large fraction of its length, and a small fraction of its width is my wild estimate). You can really only see the core section with the naked eye.