Level1SpaceTechs (astronomy)

Gravitational lensing!


Kinda cool is the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory:
http://www.ptf.caltech.edu/page/about
Using an old scope built in the 1950's. A 48" scope with a 72" mirror, a design invented in the 1930's!

http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/about/telescopes/oschin.html
Nice to see old tech getting the job done!

2 Likes

1900 miles above Saturn and 200 miles from the innermost ring, basically threading a needle with a radio delay of around an hour or so.


Scientists were expecting allot more dust between the rings and Saturn.
Sometimes finding nothing is a huge find.

A thousand years from now archaeologists will scratch their heads wondering why NASA did not make several Cassini-class space probes to explore the rest of the outer planets.
On the big MT:
"We weren't expecting this" is Phd-speak for "My lifes work now is good for lining a bird cage"

4 Likes

ahaha wow. that's kinda harsh self assessment. prolly right tho :\ fuck this world

2 Likes

That's how science works. You spend your life researching and theorizing on something, then possibly find out in your lifetime you were completely wrong...or never live to see your theories widely accepted or proven true.

I was thinking back to Hubble and Shapley and whether spriral "nebula" were close or far away island universes.
Shapley said close, Hubble said far away. Sapley got a letter from Hubble, when asked by a colleague Hubble said something like "The end of my universe".
I think the wheelchair guy wrote about it in "A Brief History of Time".
Anyway it is a really cool story IMHO
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.html
January 2019!!!!!!
Nasa had to choose very young leaders for New Horizons so they wouldn't croak before Pluto.
No that's harsh:)

2 Likes

yah, imagine you think things are close and they end up being BILLIONS of light years away

1 Like

They knew about cephid variables since 1912 or 22, The 100 inch Hooker telescope was a huge tek leap forward. The "first space race" was actually bigger and bigger telescopes. Around 1800 the US congress lamented there was not a single world class telescope in the US.
Sadly now many telescopes lay rotting unused.

that's pretty sad, you'd think they would be preserved. but interest in the stars have always been anemic.

1 Like

http://www.astronomy.com/photos/picture-of-day
This is actaully an active solar region of the Sun

1 Like

Fascinating! Looks like someone's scalp.

1 Like

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/05/cassinis-close-up-of-saturn

true color images of saturn

2 Likes
2 Likes
5 Likes

whoa, is this earth?

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170615.html

2 Likes
1 Like


jupiter from only 5500 miles up with detail down to 4 miles.
Stories at Vox and Space.com
Vox actually has the better pics

I remember Pioneer, everyone "knew" all the moons in the solar system so pointing a camera at a moon was a waste of time. The photo's from pioneer where just staggering compared to the best we had at that time which was from the 200 inch hale telescope.
One guy on the Voyager team said, "Hey let's check out Io". Rest is history :slight_smile:

3 Likes

The ultimate click-bait headline.
I had to see if this was real or a joke. It's real.

4 Likes

I don't think that's as click-baity as the Vox article from above, but the writer of that article obviously knew what they were doing when they wrote that headline.

2030 For a Uranus trip, imagine where we'll be by then. Do we even need to fund a rocket to probe Uranus?
kek