Anyone for an astronomy thread?

[Kevin S]

Looks like we've still got a while to catch him at his most beautiful at least:
http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essent...ometimes-faint

[hobbes]

There have been 2 proper clear nights in the last fortnight. On one of which we had people over for dinner and the other I was at a gig.
My giant new telescope is getting lonely.
Still, Mars won't be much of a view. It's nearest approach has coincided with a global dust storm so it's just a big red blob right now.

[Sits]

Mars, Saturn and a moon looking like a big smile all looked good from Mauritius last week.

#placedrop

[Various Artist]

That's annoying, it's behind trees from here now so can't compare. Great view of both Jupiter and Saturn in the southern sky either side of a fine gibbous Moon, though.

[Kevin S]

Get a load of Mars tonight. Reddest I've ever seen it, I'm sure.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Imagine what we will learn from the insight lander?

[elguapo4]

The chances of anything coming from Mars is a million to.....ok 50,000 to 1

[Gerontophile]

Was there life on Mars? It's a possibility.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The EU seems to be making a move on ESA in some form

tbh this mightn't be the worst idea in the world though it is going to be interesting to see how much money each country is prepared to contribute, if they're not getting most of that money spent in their country, supporting firms in their economy.

also, these time elapse photos of Rocket launches are really beautiful.

Click for photo

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

What most americans want the US to spend its Space money on. It's long on Climate change, and asteroid cataloguing, and short on moon bases. Indeed the US govt seems intent on ending the first, and spends almost no money on the second.

[Sits]

Yeah, I thought about 3.3-3.4m AU, give or take. Didn't want to hijack the post though, y'know.

[Gawpus]

WOW. That's doing my head in. How far away is that, and what are we seeing exactly? Incredible.

It's pictures taken from the Rosetta after it had landed on the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet at the end of its mission (further good pictures on the wiki links). I'm not sure exactly how far it is at the time the above was taken, comets' orbits being what they are, but as a very rough guide:

On 10 February 2015, it went through solar conjunction when it was 5 degrees from the Sun and was 3.3 AU (490 million km) from Earth.

[Various Artist]

Fantastic. Thanks for sharing that Gawpus.

[Sits]

WOW. That's doing my head in. How far away is that, and what are we seeing exactly? Incredible.

[Gawpus]

View from a comet:

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/988711358358261762

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I appreciate it's not exactly astronomy related, but does Scott manley have the best speaking voice in the world?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

No landing for the cameras. They're throwing these reused ones away and trying to work out ways of landing that require less fuel. They don't seem to have the hang of it yet, given how the middle bit of the falcon heavy nearly wiped out the landing tug.

Fecking clouds prevented me from seeing the chinese space station ploughing back into the atmosphere.

[Gerontophile]

2:30m before take off of the latest Falcon, off to the ISS with 3 tons of stuff. (Science channel, if you have it.)

[Guy Profumo]

No pictures of Sunday's aurora for this, or the photography thread, people?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

is that the nine circles of hell?

[wiblflibl]

Latest from Jupiter

Jupiter's north pole -

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

There's nothing wrong with wanting nice things. It's just that as you well know, when you take time to look at how the sausage is made.... then you are dealing with the Larry Goodman's of this world.

LS, I'm sure that Musk is a weirdo. I was listening to a rather fascinating interview with Tom Mueller, who is the guy who was SpaceX employee no.1 and is the guy who designs the Magic Engines. He described Musk as very strange to work for, and that He's not sure that he would want him as a father. Which is a pretty risky thing to say given how many kids he has. I'll put it to you this way, the man is pretty much singlehandedly driving a revolution in spaceflight, while simultaneously forcing every car manufacturer to abandon the Internal combustion engine. I'm prepared to allow him a certain latitude.

The one thing that he isn't is a libertarian. He ultimately frames everything he is doing in terms of trying to combat threats to humanity. Be it fighting global warming by making electric cars and solar power cheaper than the alternatives, or building a self sustaining colony on mars, so humanity doesn't get snuffed out by a comet, or a plague, or a particularly vigorous solar event. Or that the unregulated development of AI could kill us all. These are not libertarian pre-occupations. The one thing that libertarians simply cannot understand is the economic concept of Externalities. This is quite a lot of what he talks about. The thing is, that A martian colony is by necessity going to be about as libertarian as an ant farm.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

https://www.thecut.com/2016/08/elon-...r-3-years.html

I knew it, he’s a fanny. It’s fucking Atlas Shrugged with fancier trains. I really wouldn’t want to be a peon in his Mars utopia. And his ex wife’s interview in Vanity Fair?/Marie Claire?, he’s a fucktoad. Who just maybe could advance, even save humanity, but judging by his anti union bullshit at Tesla, probably won’t.



“If there is a party or event with Amber, I’d be interested in meeting her just out of curiosity,” Musk wrote. “Allegedly, she is a fan of George Orwell and Ayn Rand … most unusual.”

I too would be curious to meet someone who was both a fan of George Orwell and Ayn Rand. You've got to be a really good looking person to be allowed get away with something that crazy.

[hobbes]

[hobbes]

There are as many craters, just no Mare. The nearside crust is thinner than the far side and cooled more slowly so impacts could puncture the surface creating lava flows. The Earth and Moon were really close together at the start so once the Moon tidally locked, the heat from the molten Earth kept it liquid or very thin on the near side.