This seems to be down to cutbacks in the National science foundation's grant, which meant that they couldn't do the big repair and upgrade work that needed to be done, and the money was instead going on running repairs. They tried to give the telescope away, but no-body wanted to take it on and pump the money in. They tried to give it to NASA and they gently explained that they too were operating on a pretty thin budget. Now they will either have to essentially rebuild it from scratch, which will be expensive, but then again It obviously was time for a major overhaul. That big bit in the middle that you see there has been rapidly dismantled over the last couple of weeks. The amount of extra stuff that had been put on it over the years played a big part in this eventual collapse.
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Anyone for an astronomy thread?
Collapse
X
-
-
In the next hour or so SpaceX are going to launch their 50 metre tall prototype starship up to 12.5 km and then let it fall like a brick and try and do a fancy tail flip manouevre to land it back on the launch pad. If it works it will look like this. Yesterday they got to 1.3 seconds from launch before cancelling.
But since this is the first stab at it, It's far more likely to smash into the launchpad in a big fireball. Though if it gets that far it will likely be considered a big success. There are livestreams all over youtube. so you can take your pick.
Comment
-
-
Well that was quite exciting. Here's Scott Manley's video. It's weird watching something that big falling at terminal velocity. I was surprised at how well it pulled off the flip manoeuvre at the end and everything was going really well, until a lack of pressure in the tanks used for landing meant one of the engines cut out, and the other essentially caught fire and it hit the ground a little too hard, giving us the big explosion that we were promised. The next one of these is more or less ready to go once they make a few tweaks based on this launch
Comment
-
The only total eclipse of the sun visible from Earth in 2020 has just taken place (between 16:06-16:08 GMT), with numerous live streams on YouTube capturing it live from Argentina.
Here's Euronews' footage – drag the red bar under the video back a few minutes to rewatch it as live:
Or CosmoSapiens:
I'm not sure there's any more beautiful sight available on this planet.
Comment
-
- Mar 2008
- 9766
- Tyne 'n' Wear (emphasis on the 'n')
- Dundee Utd, Gladbach, Atleti, Napoli, New Orleans Saints, Elgin City
Ms F drove to a hilltop to see it - I stayed at the desk and when she came back I glanced out of the back bedroom/study window and there it was. With binos you could see that Saturn was more ovoid looking
Comment
-
- Mar 2008
- 20915
- The House with the Golden Windows
- Fast falling out of love for football.
- WasPlain Hobnobs
Showing you fear among the handfuls of dust
Phobos eclipsing the Sun as seen from the Curiosity Rover
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/scienc...nment-55562154
Comment
-
This is a good stream
Wemartians is a really good podcast. The guy who does it, Jake Robbins is from the west coast of canada, and has that dry canadian sense of humour that reminds me of the influx of canadians into Irish colleges in 2001. This stream is a good example of what it is like in general, and he does a great job of getting people on to discuss what they are doing on mars in a way that is really accessible. He also does another podcast with an italian american from philly called offnominal, which has a much broader remit, which again is very good at telling you about things that are happening in a very relaxed, very accessible way.
- Likes 1
Comment
-
Went out for a mid-evening walk round the village with Mrs TrL last night and just happened to be pointing in the right direction to see a bright white light with orange sparks coming off both sides as it curved down, apparently towards Liverpool. It was obviously much lower and brighter than any meteor shower I've ever seen, so much so that I wondered if it was some sort of marine flare. Turns out it was a meteor https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-eng...istol-56237596
Comment
-
Oh wow, the shot in the montage video on that link of the meteor streaking right across the centre of Orion, as seen from Nuneaton, is particularly great.
Rather a startling thought that, as mentioned at the end of the video according to NASA, "Earth gets hit by 100 tonnes of space debris every day". For all that space is really, really big and really, really empty, there's still an awful lot of bits of this and this flying about everywhere up there that you simply have to adequately shield your sensitive spacecraft/instruments/astronauts etc. from to the nth degree.
Comment
Comment