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Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2023 10:57 pm
by Grumble
Cheers for that, not much chance in the NW though. Copied your post to my family group as we’re spread around
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2023 11:24 pm
by Gfamily
Grumble wrote: ↑Wed Nov 29, 2023 10:57 pm
Cheers for that, not much chance in the NW though. Copied your post to my family group as we’re spread around
It might be worth checking on Friday evening, as the forecast is a bit better, and you never know.
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2023 6:38 pm
by Pishwish
Things haven't been going great for the European launch industry recently. The upgraded small Vega launcher has not returned to flight since a high profile launch failure last year, the war in Ukraine has ended medium-lift Soyuz launches from Guyana, and the heavy-lift Ariane 6 rocket looks set for further delays.
And now some propellant tanks for the last unupgraded Vega rocket, due to launch ESA's Biomas satellite in 2024, have been found in a landfill.
https://europeanspaceflight.com/the-cas ... ant-tanks/
They can't make new ones, and the only spares are some old tanks intended for qualification testing. They may use these, or try to adapt the rocket so it can use the upgraded upper stage.
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 8:10 pm
by IvanV
Tonight's the night Betelgeuse will apparently disappear for about 10 seconds at about 0017 GMT, due to occultation by an asteroid.
Sadly it is clouding up here.
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:01 pm
by Gfamily
IvanV wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 8:10 pm
Tonight's the night Betelgeuse will apparently disappear for about 10 seconds at about 0017 GMT, due to occultation by an asteroid.
Sadly it is clouding up here.
Need to be in Southern Spain or thereabouts.
ETA this map I found online
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:48 pm
by IvanV
Gfamily wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:01 pm
IvanV wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 8:10 pm
Tonight's the night Betelgeuse will apparently disappear for about 10 seconds at about 0017 GMT, due to occultation by an asteroid.
Sadly it is clouding up here.
Need to be in Southern Spain or thereabouts.
ETA this map I found online
Oddly, I did wonder if it was only locally visible, when I first read about this a couple of weeks ago. But I came away with the impression it would be widely visible. Which is clearly nonsense on reflection. The point is widely made in more recent articles.
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:53 pm
by Gfamily
IvanV wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:48 pm
Gfamily wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:01 pm
IvanV wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 8:10 pm
Tonight's the night Betelgeuse will apparently disappear for about 10 seconds at about 0017 GMT, due to occultation by an asteroid.
Sadly it is clouding up here.
Need to be in Southern Spain or thereabouts.
ETA this map I found online
Oddly, I did wonder if it was only locally visible, when I first read about this a couple of weeks ago. But I came away with the impression it would be widely visible. Which is clearly nonsense on reflection. The point is widely made in more recent articles.
One of the methods of measuring the size of asteroids involves observing how long a stellar occultation lasts, and also observing from a range of latitudes around the 'centre path' to determine the 'width' of the asteroid as it passed the star.
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2024 2:03 pm
by Gfamily
Professor Chris Lintott is the Gresham Professor of Astronomy and is giving a talk on
Oumuamua, the asteroid that came from interstellar space this evening.
Can be watched online and will be available on catch up later.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/oumuamua
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2024 3:17 pm
by Gfamily
Gfamily wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 2:03 pm
Professor Chris Lintott is the Gresham Professor of Astronomy and is giving a talk on
Oumuamua, the asteroid that came from interstellar space
this evening a while ago.
On catch-up now
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/oumuamua
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2024 4:34 pm
by Gfamily
Famously, a NASA mission to Mars was lost because of one calculation being done in Imperial measures rather than in metric.
Here's a tweet about what happened.
https://x.com/pronounced_kyle/status/17 ... 45755?s=20
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2024 6:56 pm
by Brightonian
Am told there's a very unusual red aurora borealis at the moment, being reported in Sweden at least. (Just looked from here in Ireland and there's nothing apparent.)
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2024 7:13 pm
by Gfamily
Brightonian wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2024 6:56 pm
Am told there's a very unusual red aurora borealis at the moment, being reported in Sweden at least. (Just looked from here in Ireland and there's nothing apparent.)
A red alert came up at 6pm on my aurora app, but it's reverted to amber now..
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2024 6:03 pm
by dyqik
Our*
MethaneSAT is launching today at 2:05pm PST/10:05pm UTC. Alongside a bunch of other stuff on the same launch.
*colleagues and others.
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 7:00 pm
by Gfamily
The third attempt at a SpaceX Starship launch is scheduled for this Thursday at midday GMT.
It is a test flight, so success is not assured, but their learning curve has tended towards achieving their goals relatively quickly.
SpaceX will start streaming for the launch about 30 minutes beforehand.
There'll probably be a link from here.
https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2024 11:40 am
by Gfamily
Gfamily wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 7:00 pm
The third attempt at a SpaceX Starship launch is scheduled for this Thursday at midday GMT.
It is a test flight, so success is not assured, but their learning curve has tended towards achieving their goals relatively quickly.
SpaceX will start streaming for the launch about 30 minutes beforehand.
There'll probably be a link from here.
https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/
The launch seems to have moved back to about 12:30 GMT -
There will be a twitter broadcast starting at 11:58 available on
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission ... p-flight-3
(or on
Youtube, and probably elsewhere)
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2024 9:43 pm
by Pishwish
So it was more successful than the previous attempt (Starship reached space) but the booster did not gently land in the ocean like it was supposed to and the Starship did not reenter successfully. Some cool footage though.
Scott Manley's summary
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2024 10:50 pm
by Gfamily
Pishwish wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 9:43 pm
So it was more successful than the previous attempt (Starship reached space) but the booster did not gently land in the ocean like it was supposed to and the Starship did not reenter successfully. Some cool footage though.
Scott Manley's summary
Pretty cool to be able to livestream the Starship re-entry using Starlink to transmit the data. Couldn't be done if relying on ground receivers as the plasma would shield transmissions in that direction.
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2024 6:00 pm
by Gfamily
A great rendition of the SpaceShip re-entry video, but stabilised relative to the Earth below.
It wasn't well controlled.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768675720014791030
- Starship.jpg (35.92 KiB) Viewed 8603 times
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2024 8:28 pm
by Woodchopper
With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe,” said Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Riess holds a Nobel Prize for co-discovering the fact that the universe’s expansion is accelerating, due to a mysterious phenomenon now called “dark energy.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1037233
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2024 8:34 pm
by dyqik
We've finished digitizing all of the glass plates held at Harvard College Observatory, and they're now all online (all 1.2 petabytes of data).
E.g.
https://starglass.cfa.harvard.edu/plate/b02312
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2024 9:17 pm
by Martin Y
That's a remarkable coincidence as I too have a bunch of stuff I'm going to get around to sorting out in about 130+ years.
Actually it reminds me of the star trails I photographed as a kid with a 127 format roll film camera. Nice big negatives. Made me realise that was a long time ago, back when that plate wasn't even 100 yet.
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2024 11:23 am
by Gfamily
Very impressed by this.
It's the map of all the flights by NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars.
https://x.com/NASAPersevere/status/1781357070576685288
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Wed May 22, 2024 1:23 pm
by Gfamily
What do you do when a bright meteor goes overhead?
Duck!
https://x.com/volcaholic1/status/1793089297102606823
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2024 11:33 am
by Pishwish
Boeing finally launched their incredibly late crewedstarliner capsule, but the real excitement this week was SpaceX's 4th launch of superheavy
https://youtu.be/8m0TY6i1Kuo?feature=shared
Re: Astronomy and Space
Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2024 12:09 pm
by Gfamily
This is how not to do a rocket's static test
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807334917031825869
It's a Chinese Tianlong-3 rocket - looks like a copy of the Space-X Falcon9.