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#2501 |
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 21,640
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Quote:
Comets.
here's the truth. when you read "worlds in collision" you realise that comets are not billions of years old. they are young, and decaying quickly as their comas stream off into space. that's is why Halley's comet was a mighty thing in 1066, but a damp squib a few years ago. Read "worlds in collision" now. |
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#2502 |
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Join Date: May 2004
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Quote:
Comets.
here's the truth. when you read "worlds in collision" you realise that comets are not billions of years old. they are young, and decaying quickly as their comas stream off into space. that's is why Halley's comet was a mighty thing in 1066, but a damp squib a few years ago. Read "worlds in collision" now. Good news: Slooh are doing an autumn Supermoon feature; Bad news: it's on at 2.30am Tuesday morning ![]() http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/t...r-harvest-moon Dang!
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#2503 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Mars
Posts: 1,489
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Curiosity Reaches Mount Sharp to Look for Life's Niches Quote:
More than two years after touching down inside Gale Crater, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has arrived at the place that drove scientists to select the landing site at the outset - Mount Sharp. http://news.discovery.com/space/curi...hes-140912.htmThe three-mile high mountain of layered rock rises from the center of the impact basin. Each strata holds clues about a different time in Martian history, including periods when warmer temperatures and a thicker, wetter atmosphere made the planet more hospitable to life, or at least life as we know it on Earth. All the latest images: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ The best ones are usually from the mast camera (Mastcam)
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#2504 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Maven has arrived at Mars
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/news/whatsn...ws&NewsID=1712 NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft successfully entered Mars' orbit at 7:24 p.m. PDT (10:24 p.m. EDT) Sunday, Sept. 21, where it now will prepare to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere as never done before. MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars. |
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#2505 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Mars
Posts: 1,489
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Recent photo from curiosity: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multime...E01_DXXX&s=753
What is that in the image at the top left? |
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#2506 |
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Join Date: May 2004
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Quote:
Maven has arrived at Mars
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/news/whatsn...ws&NewsID=1712 NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft successfully entered Mars' orbit at 7:24 p.m. PDT (10:24 p.m. EDT) Sunday, Sept. 21, where it now will prepare to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere as never done before. MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars. Quote:
Recent photo from curiosity: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multime...E01_DXXX&s=753
What is that in the image at the top left? All too often people see bones or skull forms in Martian rocks when that's impossible because Mars was only potentially hospitable for life during part of the Noachian era and there just wasn't time for anything more complex than bacteria or actinomycetes to have evolved before the planetary climate deteriorated. In other news, NASA has selected two companies to provide crew transport to Earth orbit and the International Space Station and the world's first photographs has been taken with a 3D printed telescope: Nasa picks astronaut crew ship designs The US space agency Nasa has picked the companies it hopes can take the country's astronauts back into space. It is giving up to $6.2bn to the Boeing and SpaceX firms, to help them finish the development of new crew capsules. Since the space shuttles were retired in 2011, the Americans have relied on Russia and its Soyuz vehicles to get to the International Space Station. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29228900 University launches world's first photographs taken with telescope made by 3D printing The telescope in question costs just £100 to make and is constructed from parts readily available on the internet. The entrepreneurs responsible, Institute of Physics member, Mark Wrigley, and University of Sheffield Physics and Astronomy research associate, Andy Kirby, have even made the plans available online so that any budding astronomers can build their own telescope, saving a minimum of £800 compared to models of the same capabilities. http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/3...onomy-1.404562 |
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#2507 |
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Join Date: May 2004
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...and now, to complement NASA's Maven mission, we have the on budget and on time Mangalyaan probe from India which is now in orbit around Mars:
Why India's Mars mission is so cheap - and thrilling India's space programme has succeeded at the first attempt where others have failed - by sending an operational mission to Mars. The Mangalyaan satellite was confirmed to be in orbit shortly after 0800, Indian time. It is, without doubt, a considerable achievement. This is a mission that has been budgeted at 4.5bn rupees ($74m), which, by Western standards, is staggeringly cheap. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29341850 India puts interplanetary probe in orbit at Mars The mission carries about 33 pounds, or 15 kilograms, of scientific instrumentation to gather data on the history of the Martian climate and the mineral make-up of its surface. The mission carries a color imaging camera to return medium-resolution pictures of the Martian surface, a thermal infrared spectrometer to measure the chemical composition of rocks and soils, and instruments to assess the Mars atmosphere, including a methane detector. http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n14.../#.VCMfO8cmh9g |
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#2508 |
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Join Date: May 2009
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Posts: 12,829
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Quote:
...and now, to complement NASA's Maven mission, we have the on budget and on time Mangalyaan probe from India which is now in orbit around Mars:
Why India's Mars mission is so cheap - and thrilling India's space programme has succeeded at the first attempt where others have failed - by sending an operational mission to Mars. The Mangalyaan satellite was confirmed to be in orbit shortly after 0800, Indian time. It is, without doubt, a considerable achievement. This is a mission that has been budgeted at 4.5bn rupees ($74m), which, by Western standards, is staggeringly cheap. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29341850 India puts interplanetary probe in orbit at Mars The mission carries about 33 pounds, or 15 kilograms, of scientific instrumentation to gather data on the history of the Martian climate and the mineral make-up of its surface. The mission carries a color imaging camera to return medium-resolution pictures of the Martian surface, a thermal infrared spectrometer to measure the chemical composition of rocks and soils, and instruments to assess the Mars atmosphere, including a methane detector. http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n14.../#.VCMfO8cmh9g But if I could be cynical, isn't this no more than a higher budget Helium balloon, with a camera, type 6th Form experiment to Mars rather than Earth upper-atmosphere? It won't descend to the surface and should we put more and larger craft onto, safe landings, on Mars before all the hype over Manned and return explorations? JFK managed to set NASA in motion for Apollo to the Moon. It's a bit tricky for Mars. I don't want to be unduly negative, I love Science. |
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#2509 |
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Join Date: May 2004
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Quote:
It is very impressive.
But if I could be cynical, isn't this no more than a higher budget Helium balloon, with a camera, type 6th Form experiment to Mars rather than Earth upper-atmosphere? It won't descend to the surface and should we put more and larger craft onto, safe landings, on Mars before all the hype over Manned and return explorations? JFK managed to set NASA in motion for Apollo to the Moon. It's a bit tricky for Mars. I don't want to be unduly negative, I love Science. Quote:
Its measurements of other atmospheric components will dovetail very nicely with Maven and the observations being made by Europe's Mars Express. "It means we'll be getting three-point measurements, which is tremendous," says Prof Coates.
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#2510 |
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Sorry I was unduly negative and projecting these advancements onto a possible future set of missions.
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#2511 |
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Join Date: May 2014
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#2512 |
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Join Date: Mar 2014
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Quote:
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#2513 |
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Join Date: Jun 2006
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Quote:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multime...E01_DXXX&s=751 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multime...E01_DXXX&s=751 |
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#2514 |
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Join Date: May 2004
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Quote:
Sorry I was unduly negative and projecting these advancements onto a possible future set of missions.
Quote:
Now for some more astro news: Curiosity Mars rover drills into base of Mount Sharp The Curiosity rover has drilled its first full hole in Martian rock since May. The robot used its power tool to grind out a sample from a pale, flat slab at a location dubbed "Pahrump Hills". Curiosity has previously drilled into three rocks to collect powdered tailings for analysis in its sophisticated onboard laboratories. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29361606 India's Mars Orbiter Mission sends first images of Red Planet BANGALORE/NEW DELHI: India's Mars spacecraft has beamed back the first images of the red planet and they were made public by ISRO with a caption "The view is nice up here", a day after it was placed in orbit in the very first attempt scripting space history. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...w/43414311.cms https://www.facebook.com/isromom More on the exploration of Mars here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explora...ars#Mars_Curse Rosetta: Date fixed for historic comet landing attempt The date has been fixed for Europe's daring attempt to land on a comet: Wednesday 12 November. It will see the Rosetta satellite, which is currently orbiting the huge "ice mountain" known as 67P, drop a small robot from a height of 20km. If all goes well, the lander will free-fall towards the comet, making contact with the surface somewhere in a 1km-wide zone at roughly 15:35 GMT. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29380448 |
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#2515 |
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Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock's Horizon last night was excellent.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...-need-the-moon 'Do we really need the Moon' examined ..the Moon! Amongst nuggets it let fall, is that as the Moon recedes, the Earth will become unstable. We may only have a billion years left of habitable life, not 5 billion ![]() But one interesting point it discussed is building a space port 'hub' on the Moon and using that as a jumping off point for the rest of the Solar System and perhaps beyond. Still very difficult, but a lot easier than setting off directly for Mars. Perhaps it could be called Moonbase Alpha? (the cost would still be astronomical) |
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#2516 |
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Hampshire
Posts: 2,090
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Rosetta's lander Philae's touchdown on comet 67/P should be confirmed at 4pm on Wednesday 12 November: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Sp...on_12_November
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#2517 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Mars
Posts: 1,489
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Cool Martian wheels and axle: http://i.imgur.com/T8iARcE.jpg
![]() Original: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multime...E01_DXXX&s=729 |
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#2518 |
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Join Date: May 2003
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The bid to reinstate Pluto's planet status gathers momentum:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...t-9769753.html |
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#2519 |
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Anybody who wants to call Pluto a planet can do so. They are still wrong though.
That article starts off incorrectly. The were once thirteen planets, and some of the other ex planets would still qualify under the 'smallest spherical lump' definition. Pluto just needs to suck it up, except that obviously, it can't easily do that. |
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#2520 |
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Quote:
The bid to reinstate Pluto's planet status gathers momentum:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...t-9769753.html Quote:
Anybody who wants to call Pluto a planet can do so. They are still wrong though.
That article starts off incorrectly. The were once thirteen planets, and some of the other ex planets would still qualify under the 'smallest spherical lump' definition. Pluto just needs to suck it up, except that obviously, it can't easily do that. In the current definition (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet#2006_definition), astronomers are trying to rationalise an essentially chaotic and random system that the formation of the solar system has served up. That current system seems to make better sense than having the old system whereby 40+ planets would ultimately comprise the solar system, most of which would be relatively insignificant ice asteroids at the far reaches of the solar system. The alternative to both of the above is to have entirely arbitrary system so that, for example, a planet is defined as having a radius of 1000km which would include both Pluto and Eris but would exclude all the rest. That also has the potential to generate anomalies though because billions of kilometres away, there might very well be undiscovered icy bodies with radii 998km and 999km and so the argument gets reopened again. It's kind of a no win situation really. By the way, l recommend this book here: How I Killed Pluto and why it Had it Coming by Mike Brown https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/pr...ed=0CGAQpiswAA ...and this item here: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zuJjR8Pmqt...from_ceres.jpg |
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#2521 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Giant sunspot AR2192 timelapse, largest spot of the current solar cycle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_tNpRMApJs |
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#2522 |
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Join Date: Jul 2009
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Posts: 17,848
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Quote:
This is an interesting debate and I suspect it will reach a peak next year when the New Horizons mission reaches the double world of Pluto and Charon.
In the current definition (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet#2006_definition), astronomers are trying to rationalise an essentially chaotic and random system that the formation of the solar system has served up. That current system seems to make better sense than having the old system whereby 40+ planets would ultimately comprise the solar system, most of which would be relatively insignificant ice asteroids at the far reaches of the solar system. The alternative to both of the above is to have entirely arbitrary system so that, for example, a planet is defined as having a radius of 1000km which would include both Pluto and Eris but would exclude all the rest. That also has the potential to generate anomalies though because billions of kilometres away, there might very well be undiscovered icy bodies with radii 998km and 999km and so the argument gets reopened again. It's kind of a no win situation really. By the way, l recommend this book here: How I Killed Pluto and why it Had it Coming by Mike Brown https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/pr...ed=0CGAQpiswAA ...and this item here: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zuJjR8Pmqt...from_ceres.jpg |
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#2523 |
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Join Date: Nov 2008
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Posts: 4,020
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Quote:
Giant sunspot AR2192 timelapse, largest spot of the current solar cycle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_tNpRMApJs |
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#2524 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Mars
Posts: 1,489
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Cassini Spies a Sunny Day on Titan's Seas Quote:
Cassini has spotted sun glint before on Titan’s surface, but this is the first set of observations (stitched together as a mosaic) where the boundaries of the seas and the sunlight glint are visible in the same view. http://news.discovery.com/space/cass...eas-141030.htmAs Titan’s surface is so cold, water cannot exist in a liquid state. Instead, the world cycles liquid methane (a substance that has a lower freezing point than water) from Titan’s “great lakes”, into the atmosphere as vapor, which condenses as clouds, raining methane back down onto the hydrocarbon surface. Much like Earth’s water cycle, Titan’s methane cycle creates rivers, deltas, valleys and large masses of liquid methane as observed here. Really great image. ![]() http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/blogs/d...141030-jpg.jpg |
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#2525 |
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Join Date: May 2004
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It's Hallowe'en and it's scary time in the skies: Ghost craters - - https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gh...w&ved=0CDIQsAQ http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclo...st_crater.html http://astronomynow.com/2014/10/31/g...-at-halloween/The Skull Nebula - double ![]() - https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ng...ed=0CAYQ_AUoAQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_246And now back to the serious stuff... Quote:
So why does Terra/Luna not count as 2 planets then (ie a binary planet sub system)?
In the case of the Earth and Moon, the barycentre lies underneath the Earth's crust because the Earth is 81x more massive than the Moon - http://scienceprojectideasforkids.co...balancejpg.jpg - and so it's not technically regarded as a double planet. It's now time for a news update starting with an unfortunate tragedy: One dead in Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo test crash At least one person is dead and another injured after Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space tourism craft crashed in a California desert, the California Highway Patrol has said. The craft was undergoing manned testing when it experienced what the company described as "a serious anomaly". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29857182 Hubble Space Telescope sees ‘ghost light’ from dead galaxies NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has picked up the faint, ghostly glow of stars ejected from ancient galaxies that were gravitationally ripped apart several billion years ago. The mayhem happened 4 billion light-years away, inside an immense collection of nearly 500 galaxies nicknamed “Pandora’s Cluster,” also known as Abell 2744. The scattered stars are no longer bound to any one galaxy, and drift freely between galaxies in the cluster. http://astronomynow.com/2014/10/30/h...-dead-galaxies Moon probe’s impact crater found “The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team recently developed a new computer tool to search Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) before and after image pairs for new craters, the LADEE impact event provided a fun test, said Mark Robinson, LROC principal investigator from Arizona State University in Tempe. “As it turns there were several small surface changes found in the predicted area of the impact, the biggest and most distinctive was within 968 feet (295 metres) of the spot estimated by the LADEE operations team. What fun!” http://astronomynow.com/2014/10/30/m...-crater-found/ Now it's time for some audio astronomy: The Making of the Moon Nuclear Fusion A MESSENGER From Mercury |
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