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Civilization 7 has been announced. For more info please check the forum here .
The thread for space cadets!
- Thread starter hobbsyoyo
- Start date
stfoskey12
Emperor of Foskania
With the Chandrayaan-3 landing, I made a map of Moon landings by country (the yellow European countries are ESA member states). I counted USSR as Russia for the purposes of this map.
This is one of the most advanced images ever taken of a star being born. The shot, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), shows jets of hot material flowing from Herbig-Haro 211-mm, one of the youngest stars known to scientists. “When a star comes into being, it emits highly supersonic beams of matter that can stretch for several light years,” says Tom Ray, an astronomer at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Typical jets contain matter in atomic form, either neutral atoms or ions. “The very-youngest stars appear to emit beams of almost pure molecules, contrary to what astronomers thought before, and move very slowly,” says Ray. The star itself sits in the dark gap near the centre of the image, obscured by dust.
Narz
keeping it real
Baby you're a firework
Have we found aliens?
Webb Discovers Methane, Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere of K2-18 b
A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb’s discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface.
The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b. These initial Webb observations also provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth, this is only produced by life. The bulk of the DMS in Earth’s atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments.
The inference of DMS is less robust and requires further validation. “Upcoming Webb observations should be able to confirm if DMS is indeed present in the atmosphere of K2-18 b at significant levels,” explained Madhusudhan.
While K2-18 b lies in the habitable zone, and is now known to harbor carbon-bearing molecules, this does not necessarily mean that the planet can support life. The planet's large size — with a radius 2.6 times the radius of Earth — means that the planet’s interior likely contains a large mantle of high-pressure ice, like Neptune, but with a thinner hydrogen-rich atmosphere and an ocean surface. Hycean worlds are predicted to have oceans of water. However, it is also possible that the ocean is too hot to be habitable or be liquid.
Webb Discovers Methane, Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere of K2-18 b
A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb’s discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface.
The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b. These initial Webb observations also provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth, this is only produced by life. The bulk of the DMS in Earth’s atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments.
The inference of DMS is less robust and requires further validation. “Upcoming Webb observations should be able to confirm if DMS is indeed present in the atmosphere of K2-18 b at significant levels,” explained Madhusudhan.
While K2-18 b lies in the habitable zone, and is now known to harbor carbon-bearing molecules, this does not necessarily mean that the planet can support life. The planet's large size — with a radius 2.6 times the radius of Earth — means that the planet’s interior likely contains a large mantle of high-pressure ice, like Neptune, but with a thinner hydrogen-rich atmosphere and an ocean surface. Hycean worlds are predicted to have oceans of water. However, it is also possible that the ocean is too hot to be habitable or be liquid.
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Narz
keeping it real
Sadly 3,910,960,000 times further than anywhere we've ever been (the moon)
Soyuz MS-24 docking to the ISS, live feed.
Russia's Soyuz MS-24 launches crew for up to yearlong stay on space station
Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub have left Earth to spend a year aboard the International Space Station, flying on Russia's Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft with NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara, who will come home after six months.
www.collectspace.com
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A haul of rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu was successfully dropped off in the US desert on Sunday. The samples travelled two billion kilometres in the grasp of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which snatched them during a brief touchdown three years ago. NASA will store the samples in pure nitrogen to keep them pristine, and will search them for clues to the Solar System’s origins — including nucleobases, the building blocks of DNA. The milestone builds on two previous sample-return missions completed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which collected some grains from the asteroid Itokawa in 2005, and a few grams of material from the asteroid Ryugu in 2019. The OSIRIS spacecraft is now en route to the stony asteroid Apophis, whose chemical composition is different from Bennu’s.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
James Webb telescope makes 'JuMBO' discovery of planet-like objects in Orion
Jupiter-sized "planets" free-floating in space, unconnected to any star, have been spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).What's intriguing about the discovery is that these objects appear to be moving in pairs. Astronomers are currently struggling to explain them.
The telescope observed about 40 pairs in a fabulously detailed new survey of the famous Orion Nebula.
They've been nicknamed Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or "JuMBOs" for short.
One possibility is that these objects grew out of regions in the nebula where the density of material was insufficient to make fully fledged stars.
Another possibility is that they were made around stars and were then kicked out into interstellar space through various interactions.
"The ejection hypothesis is the favoured one at the moment," said Prof Mark McCaughrean.
"Gas physics suggests you shouldn't be able to make objects with the mass of Jupiter on their own, and we know single planets can get kicked out from star systems. But how do you kick out pairs of these things together? Right now, we don't have an answer. It's one for the theoreticians," the European Space Agency's (Esa) senior science adviser told BBC News.
Prof McCaughrean led the team that produced the new Orion survey.
Using JWST's remarkable resolution and infrared sensitivity, the astronomers have added substantially to the information already mined by older telescopes, including Webb's direct predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Orion Nebula, also known by its sky catalogue name of M42, is the nearest, large star-forming region to Earth.
Along with the quartet of bright suns at its centre called the Trapezium, this region of space is visible to the naked eye as a smudge on the sky.
If you don't know it, it can be found low down in the constellation of Orion, which is named after a mythical Greek hunter. The nebula forms part of the hunter's "sword", hanging from his "belt".
The new JWST image is actually a mosaic of 700 views acquired by Webb's NIRCam instrument over a week of observations.
To give a sense of scale, it would take a spaceship travelling at light speed a little over four years to traverse the entire scene. The nebula itself is about 1,400 light-years from Earth.
Tucked away in this vista are thousands of young stars, spanning a range of masses from 40 down to less than 0.1 times the mass of our Sun.
Many of these stars are surrounded by dense discs of gas and dust which may be forming planets, although in some cases, these discs are being destroyed by the intense ultraviolet radiation and strong winds from the most massive stars in the region, in particular from the Trapezium.
The slider tool on this page shows the same nebula scene at shorter and at longer wavelengths. Using different filters in this way emphasises items of interest.
Look at the longer wavelength version to examine the sculpted green clouds of gas that contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. PAHs are ubiquitous compounds in space produced by stars.
Look also at the many-fingered red feature that dominates the background.
Known as the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 outflow, this is a mass of molecular hydrogen that has been shocked by the the immense energy streaming away from the site of a cataclysmic collision of two giant stars. The speed of the outflow at more than 100km/s indicates the star merger occurred just a few hundred years previously.
Notice the fingertips are tinged with green - a marker for gaseous iron.
There is so much to peruse and probe in the full-sized survey image which is 21,000 by 14,500 pixels. But it is the JuMBOs that have caught the immediate attention of astronomers.
"My reactions ranged from: 'Whaaat?!?' to 'Are you sure?" to 'That's just so weird!' to 'How could binaries be ejected together?'" recalled Dr Heidi Hammel who was not on the survey team.
She said there were no models of planetary system formation that predicted the ejection of binary pairs of planets.
"But... maybe all star formation regions host these double-Jupiters (and maybe even double-Neptunes and double Earths!), and we just haven't had a telescope powerful enough to see them before," the multidisciplinary scientist on JWST told BBC News.
Esa will be posting the full image of M42 on its EsaSky portal which allows anyone to explore publicly available astronomical data. Initial papers describing the survey and the JuMBO discovery will be posted on the arXiv pre-print server on Tuesday.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66974738
Huge new satellite outshines nearly every star in the sky
On some nights, one of the brightest objects in the sky is neither a planet nor a star. It is a telecommunications satellite called BlueWalker 3, and at times it outshines 99% of the stars visible from a dark location on Earth, according to observations reported today in Nature.
BlueWalker 3 is the most brilliant recent addition to a sky that is already swarming with satellites. The spaceflight company SpaceX alone has launched more than 5,000 satellites into orbit, and companies around the globe have collectively proposed launching more than half a million satellites in the coming years — a scenario that astronomers fear could hamper scientific observations of the Universe.
Telecommunications firm AST SpaceMobile in Midland, Texas, launched BlueWalker 3 on 10 September 2022 as a prototype for a satellite fleet designed to make mobile broadband available almost anywhere. The satellite’s huge array of antennas and white colour mean that it reflects a considerable amount of sunlight back towards Earth, making it shine even at twilight.
To quantify its effects, professional and amateur astronomers embarked on an international observation campaign, ultimately spotting the satellite from locations in Chile, the United States, Mexico, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Morocco. The researchers assessed the satellite’s shine using a standard astronomical index called the magnitude scale, on which the brightest objects have the smallest numbers. The brilliant Venus, for example, can reach a magnitude of –4.6, whereas the North Star is much dimmer, at magnitude +2. That is roughly the magnitude limit visible from a city with the naked eye.
On 10 November 2022, the satellite unfurled its array of antennas, causing it to brighten to magnitude +0.4. If it were a star, it would have been one of the ten brightest in the sky. But its apparent brightness changes as the satellite rotates, and by late December, it had dimmed to a magnitude of +6. It then brightened again, reaching magnitude +0.4 once more on 3 April 2023.
The International Astronomical Union, a group of professional astronomers, recommends that artificial satellites in low-Earth orbit have a maximum brightness of magnitude +7. BlueWalker 3 can be hundreds of times brighter, the authors found. And AST SpaceMobile says it plans to provide broadband coverage with a fleet of 90 similar satellites, including 5 that are scheduled to launch in early 2024.
Moreover, the team observed a bright object separating from the main satellite during deployment, and later learnt that this was the container that protected the folded antennas during ascent, before being jettisoned into space. It, too, was relatively bright at magnitude +5.5.
A trail left by BlueWalker 3 is visible over the McMath–Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona
On some nights, one of the brightest objects in the sky is neither a planet nor a star. It is a telecommunications satellite called BlueWalker 3, and at times it outshines 99% of the stars visible from a dark location on Earth, according to observations reported today in Nature.
BlueWalker 3 is the most brilliant recent addition to a sky that is already swarming with satellites. The spaceflight company SpaceX alone has launched more than 5,000 satellites into orbit, and companies around the globe have collectively proposed launching more than half a million satellites in the coming years — a scenario that astronomers fear could hamper scientific observations of the Universe.
Telecommunications firm AST SpaceMobile in Midland, Texas, launched BlueWalker 3 on 10 September 2022 as a prototype for a satellite fleet designed to make mobile broadband available almost anywhere. The satellite’s huge array of antennas and white colour mean that it reflects a considerable amount of sunlight back towards Earth, making it shine even at twilight.
To quantify its effects, professional and amateur astronomers embarked on an international observation campaign, ultimately spotting the satellite from locations in Chile, the United States, Mexico, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Morocco. The researchers assessed the satellite’s shine using a standard astronomical index called the magnitude scale, on which the brightest objects have the smallest numbers. The brilliant Venus, for example, can reach a magnitude of –4.6, whereas the North Star is much dimmer, at magnitude +2. That is roughly the magnitude limit visible from a city with the naked eye.
On 10 November 2022, the satellite unfurled its array of antennas, causing it to brighten to magnitude +0.4. If it were a star, it would have been one of the ten brightest in the sky. But its apparent brightness changes as the satellite rotates, and by late December, it had dimmed to a magnitude of +6. It then brightened again, reaching magnitude +0.4 once more on 3 April 2023.
The International Astronomical Union, a group of professional astronomers, recommends that artificial satellites in low-Earth orbit have a maximum brightness of magnitude +7. BlueWalker 3 can be hundreds of times brighter, the authors found. And AST SpaceMobile says it plans to provide broadband coverage with a fleet of 90 similar satellites, including 5 that are scheduled to launch in early 2024.
Moreover, the team observed a bright object separating from the main satellite during deployment, and later learnt that this was the container that protected the folded antennas during ascent, before being jettisoned into space. It, too, was relatively bright at magnitude +5.5.
A trail left by BlueWalker 3 is visible over the McMath–Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona
This fast radio burst took 8 billion years to reach Earth
Scientists have measured the most well-travelled fast radio burst to date. The bright, briefly detectable flash of energy has barrelled through the Universe for around eight billion years — almost half the age of the Universe — before hitting telescopes on Earth. It is also more than three times more powerful than expected, challenging current models.
The age of the fast radio burst was the biggest surprise to the researchers, who published their findings today in Science. “We didn’t know whether fast radio bursts even existed that far back in time,” says study co-author Stuart Ryder, an astronomer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
In June 2022, Ryder and his colleagues detected the unusual fast radio burst — named FRB 20220610A — using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope in Western Australia. The researchers also used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to pinpoint the galaxy where the fast radio burst originated.
As to what caused the burst, when the researchers zoomed in on FRB 20220610A’s galaxy of origin, they found it was made up of two or three bright clumps. This suggests that the blast might have emerged from a group of colliding galaxies rather than only one — a common event during the early days of the Universe. “Lots of galaxies were still assembling and having big galactic traffic accidents,” says Ryder.
Writeup Paper
Scientists have measured the most well-travelled fast radio burst to date. The bright, briefly detectable flash of energy has barrelled through the Universe for around eight billion years — almost half the age of the Universe — before hitting telescopes on Earth. It is also more than three times more powerful than expected, challenging current models.
The age of the fast radio burst was the biggest surprise to the researchers, who published their findings today in Science. “We didn’t know whether fast radio bursts even existed that far back in time,” says study co-author Stuart Ryder, an astronomer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
In June 2022, Ryder and his colleagues detected the unusual fast radio burst — named FRB 20220610A — using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope in Western Australia. The researchers also used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to pinpoint the galaxy where the fast radio burst originated.
As to what caused the burst, when the researchers zoomed in on FRB 20220610A’s galaxy of origin, they found it was made up of two or three bright clumps. This suggests that the blast might have emerged from a group of colliding galaxies rather than only one — a common event during the early days of the Universe. “Lots of galaxies were still assembling and having big galactic traffic accidents,” says Ryder.
Writeup Paper
How do I find out there is an eclipse here 8 minutes after it ends!
28 October 2023 partial lunar eclipse
On 28 October 2023 a partial lunar eclipse will be visible throughout all of Europe, Asia, Africa, and western Australia.
A partial lunar eclipse happens when the Moon passes through the Earth's penumbra (the outer region of the Earth’s shadow), and only a section of it passes through the umbra (the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow).
The partial lunar eclipse will begin at 20.35 and end at 21.52 BST.
From the UK we’ll only see a small fraction of the full Moon pass into the umbra. At its maximum, which occurs at 21:15, just 12% will be in Earth's shadow, with 6% in the umbra.
28 October 2023 partial lunar eclipse
On 28 October 2023 a partial lunar eclipse will be visible throughout all of Europe, Asia, Africa, and western Australia.
A partial lunar eclipse happens when the Moon passes through the Earth's penumbra (the outer region of the Earth’s shadow), and only a section of it passes through the umbra (the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow).
The partial lunar eclipse will begin at 20.35 and end at 21.52 BST.
From the UK we’ll only see a small fraction of the full Moon pass into the umbra. At its maximum, which occurs at 21:15, just 12% will be in Earth's shadow, with 6% in the umbra.
Lexicus
Deity
When the Earth's shadow hits the moon with that lovely circular shape, it is pretty obvious we live on a giant coin.
No no no the elites don't want you to know this but it's a donut
MrCynical
Deity
You haven't missed it yet - it's not till tomorrow night.
Although the weather's not looking too promising for seeing it round here.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
James Webb telescope: Baby star launches giant jets and shocks
Imagine you could go back in time 4.6 billion years and take a picture of our Sun just as it was being born. What would it look like?Well, you can get a clue from this glorious new image acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Towards the centre of this object, called HH212, is a star coming into existence that is probably no more than 50,000 years old.
The scene would have looked much the same when our Sun was a similar age.
You can't actually see the glow from the protostar itself because it's hidden within a dense, spinning disc of gas and dust.
All you get are the pinky-red jets that it's shooting out in polar opposite directions.
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HH212 is sited in Orion, close to the three brilliant stars that make up the "belt" of the mythical hunter that gives the constellation its name. The distance from Earth is about 1,300 light-years.
Physics suggests those dramatic outflows of gas are the means by which the nascent star regulates its birthing.
"As the blobby ball of gas at the centre compacts down, it rotates. But if it rotates too fast, it will fly apart, so something has to get rid of the angular momentum," explained Prof Mark McCaughrean.
"We think it's jets and outflows. We think that as all the material shrinks down, magnetic fields are pulled together and then some of the material coming in through the disc gets captured on magnetic fields and is thrown out through the poles. That's why we call these structures bi-polar," the European Space Agency senior scientific advisor told BBC News.
The pinky-red colour denotes the presence of molecular hydrogen. That's two hydrogen atoms bonded together (rather like the "HH" in the protostar's name). Shockwaves are moving through the outflows, energising them and making them glow brightly in this Webb picture, which was captured predominantly at the infrared wavelength of 2.12 microns (that's the second part of the protostar's name!).
In the annotated picture above, look closely at the left and right jets, and trace the knots of brightness in each of them. Count the bowshocks - where faster material has crashed into slower material just ahead of it.
The structures are remarkably symmetric... except there appears to be an additional, albeit very messy bowshock on the right.
In fact, there's probably a complementary bowshock on the other side. There are certainly pinky hints of it in a wider version of this Webb image. It's just that the density of gas and dust in space in that direction is thinner and so there's less material to excite and so the shock structure appears much more diffuse.
Astronomers have been studying HH212 for 30 years, taking pictures every now and then to see how it's changed. As you might expect from the Webb super telescope, its new view is 10 times sharper than anything we've had before and will enable scientists to delve deeper into the processes that drive star formation.
A nice feature is to run together the entire image history to make a movie, to see how elements in the jet structures change over time. Repeat observations mean you can also gauge the speed at which those elements are moving - at 100km per second and more.
I've kind of suggested the HH stands for molecular hydrogen, and it's a neat fit. But it really stands for Herbig-Haro, after George Herbig and Guillermo Haro, who did the pioneering work on this type of object in the 1940s and 50s.
They would no doubt be amazed by the capabilities of JWST. It's not just the sharpness of image that Webb can achieve with its 6.5m primary mirror, it's also the breadth of colour its instruments can now detect that makes the telescope so special.
"As we said, the main wavelength for looking at these things - for looking at shocked molecular hydrogen - is 2.12 microns, or roughly four times longer than the mid-visible. But for the first time, we now have a good colour image of this particular object because we're able to observe it at other wavelengths that you just couldn't see from ground telescopes. And that will help us get into what's really happening in the jets," said Prof McCaughrean.
Webb was intended to be transformative in many fields of astronomy, and the study of Herbig-Haro objects has definitely benefitted.
Look below and you can marvel at HH212's cousin, called HH211. This object, located in the Perseus constellation, is even younger, again measured in mere thousands of years. To think our Sun started out like this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67243772
Space vs. the Man!!
Bellingcat has got hold of a "spy" satellite, and is open to suggestions about what to take a picture of. I have taken a screenshot of the zoomed out view, but the point is you can zoom in and do investigative reporter stuff.
Bellingcat has got hold of a "spy" satellite, and is open to suggestions about what to take a picture of. I have taken a screenshot of the zoomed out view, but the point is you can zoom in and do investigative reporter stuff.
Spoiler Cop City :
Spoiler Expanding milatry base near Sino-Indian border :
Spoiler Votkinsk Machine (/cruse missile/s) Building Plant :
Spoiler Mischief Reef unsinkable aircraft carrier :
Spoiler Burevestnik doomsday bomb Launch Pad :
stfoskey12
Emperor of Foskania
Those look like similar resolution to Google Earth imagery. It's still really cool that they're able to get these pictures of secret sites from their own spy satellite.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Another great life ends:
www.theguardian.com
Frank Borman, commander of first Apollo moon mission, dies aged 95
Astronaut and his crew were the first people to see Earth as a distant sphere in space
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