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[Mr.Squirrel]

Nice, I just saw a video on this earlier today.

Quite impressive when you think about it.. the variety of worlds we have found within such a short amount of time, in a pretty short range, with at least a few that may be life-sustainable.


Holly shit! That's just awesome. You know when this shot was taken exactly?

is it crazy that i wish i was born 3-5000 years in the future so i can actually be alive when we discover intelligent life on other planets? Ever since I learned about Gliese 581 c, I've had a perpetual hard on. Now I'm just massively deoressed because i wont be alive to witness us meet our distant galactic cousins

 

[Extollere]

is it crazy that i wish i was born 3-5000 years in the future so i can actually be alive when we discover intelligent life on other planets? Ever since I learned about Gliese 581 c, I've had a perpetual hard on. Now I'm just massively deoressed because i wont be alive to witness us meet our distant galactic cousins

You'll need to be born at least a few thousand years later than now to avoid the Muslim Dark Ages!

=P

 

[ChoklitReign]

You'll need to be born at least a few thousand years later than now to avoid the Muslim Dark Ages!

=P

commonsenseatheism.com

:lol :lol Please be satire. 5 seconds of Googling shows that the Dark Ages were not caused by Christianity.

 

[cjdunn]

And by "The Hole Left by the Muslim Dark Ages," of course you meant "The Hole Left by the Large Hadron Collider."

 

[Neo C.]

is it crazy that i wish i was born 3-5000 years in the future so i can actually be alive when we discover intelligent life on other planets? Ever since I learned about Gliese 581 c, I've had a perpetual hard on. Now I'm just massively deoressed because i wont be alive to witness us meet our distant galactic cousins

I'm still hoping for some major progress in medicine and other sciences. I would already be satisfied, if someone could duplicate my consciousness in digital form...

 

[Extollere]

commonsenseatheism.com

:lol :lol Please be satire. 5 seconds of Googling shows that the Dark Ages were not caused by Christianity.

Well of course, but Christianity did fill the hole afterward.

Yes the sign is sort of a joke. I mean it's plausible but probably not likely.

 

[Deku]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8321353.stm

Experts asked to review the US human spaceflight programme have given strong support to the use of commercial services to launch astronauts.

The Augustine panel published its final report on Thursday and said America could find cheaper, faster successors to the shuttle in the private sector.

The US space agency is developing two new rockets and a crew capsule.

But the committee has told President Barack Obama that these systems no longer meet the US's immediate needs.

Speaking at a press conference in Washington DC, lead members of the panel said that if crew transport services to the International Space Station were passed to the private sector, it would free Nasa to work on more difficult and more exciting objectives.

"We think this is a time to create a market for commercial firms to transport both cargo and humans between the Earth and low-Earth orbit," said Norm Augustine, the panel chairman and a former CEO of Lockheed Martin.

"While that is certainly not simple, it is much easier than going to Mars. We think Nasa would be better served to spend its money and its ability - which is immense - focusing on going beyond low-Earth orbit rather than running a trucking service to low-Earth orbit."

More of the story in the link above.

 

[Memphis Reigns]

is it crazy that i wish i was born 3-5000 years in the future so i can actually be alive when we discover intelligent life on other planets? Ever since I learned about Gliese 581 c, I've had a perpetual hard on. Now I'm just massively deoressed because i wont be alive to witness us meet our distant galactic cousins

I don't know if it makes you crazy, but if it does, then I must be crazy too because I have been longing to either a) freeze myself and awaken in the future or b) be able to travel to the future using the laws of relativity. I want to be around to witness First Contact and though I hope it happens in our lifetime, it probably will not. And since I don't have enough money to freeze myself, and since we haven't even gotten anywhere near traveling at light speed, that leaves us stuck here in 2009.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

What about the ion drive that can get a ship to Mars in less than a month?

It requires a nuclear reactor (like the ones found in submarines) to perform such a feat. Over the next two years it'll be mature enough to be shipped to the ISS for testing and from then on, who knows.

 

[AndersTheSwede]

Holly shit! That's just awesome. You know when this shot was taken exactly?

Sorry for not doing prompt follow up.

It's from here: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002171/

It's a great blog, by the way.

 

[Mr.Squirrel]

I don't know if it makes you crazy, but if it does, then I must be crazy too because I have been longing to either a) freeze myself and awaken in the future or b) be able to travel to the future using the laws of relativity. I want to be around to witness First Contact and though I hope it happens in our lifetime, it probably will not. And since I don't have enough money to freeze myself, and since we haven't even gotten anywhere near traveling at light speed, that leaves us stuck here in 2009.

Lol it warms my heart to know I'm not the only weirdo nerd who fantasizes about suspended animation and time travel in order to meet aliens. I like your style son :lol

 

[Twig]

do you think a crew would endure a 40 year trip? Obviously suspended animation would have to be used would it not? If not they'd be dead by time they got back assuming it was a return trip.

This shit can't be done without taking risks.

If our technology progressed far enough for this, I for one would jump at the chance to do this, even if it is one way.

Might I go crazy on the way there? Probably. Nonetheless! It's a risk I'm willing to take. If I ever get married or what have you, that might change, of course, but at this moment in time, I'd be among the first in line.

I mean obviously I'd think a lot harder about it if the opportunity arose, but you know what I mean.

 

[Windu]

Missions to Mars (clicky):

 

[Windu]

The youngest and most distant galaxy cluster yet has been discovered by scientists 10.2 billion light years away, a billion further than the previous record.

The JKCS041 galaxy cluster, discovered by combining x-ray data from NASA with optical and infrared telescopes, is viewed as it was when the universe was a quarter of its current age.

Galaxy clusters are the universe's largest collections of items held together by gravity, and scientists hope the discovery of one at such an early stage will help them discover more about how the universe evolved.

The discovery is on the cusp of when scientists think galaxy clusters can exist based on how long it would take them to assemble, said Dr Ben Maughan, lecturer in astrophysics at the University of Bristol.

"It is certainly the earliest example by a long way and it is pushing the limit of when we expect to see them. We do not expect to find many older than this, but you can never say never.

"Our models tell us that in the period of the universe we are looking at, the number of galaxy clusters we should be able to find is about one.

"If we were to find several tens of galaxy clusters at that distance that would be a matter of concern because in our current models the universe can not produce masses of galaxy clusters at such an early point."

Stefano Andreon, of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Milan, added: "This object is close to the distance limit expected for a galaxy cluster. We don't think gravity can work fast enough to make galaxy clusters much earlier."

Searches are nonetheless being carried out to find other galaxy clusters at extreme distances.

JKCS041 was detected in 2006 by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, and its distance was then measured by the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Hawaii, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Dr Maughan then analysed x-ray data that proved the discovery was a bona fide galaxy cluster, rather than a string of unconnected galaxies along the same line of sight.

Scientists hope follow-up studies of the new cluster will reveal more about whether the cluster is still forming, the build-up of elements such as iron within it, and the relationship between temperature, x-ray brightness and mass compared with nearby clusters.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6395761/Space-most-distant-galaxy-cluster-discovered.html

 

[Orgun]

Physicist Makes New High-resolution Panorama Of Milky Way

ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2009) — Cobbling together 3000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece. Axel Mellinger, a professor at Central Michigan University, describes the process of making the panorama in the November issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
....

Or go straight here and click the image if you want to go straight to the interactive image.

Amazing

 

[Sibylus]

The size of the universe is both a blessing and a curse. So big we can never hope to visit even a moderate amount of it, and yet by virtue of its size we can literally see what the universe looked like across vast eons. Some of these spectacular images were several billion years in the making and we frail and fleeting mortals are still so privileged as to see them with our own eyes.

The universe is a pretty wonderful place.

 

[shuyin_]

Of course, with stuff like this nothing is definitive, but i'm hopeful we'll find evidence within our lifetime as long as technology continues to develop and we're still on the face of the earth.

There is a probability of maybe 50% there is life on Europa.
All the evidence points to liquid water (the first extraterrestrial subsurface ocean of liquid water) under the ice. Kind of like Lake Vostok here on Earth.

In this liquid water it is theorized there may exist microbial life.
Problem is, it's pretty hard getting to Europa and it's even harder to penetrate the ice.

is it crazy that i wish i was born 3-5000 years in the future so i can actually be alive when we discover intelligent life on other planets? Ever since I learned about Gliese 581 c, I've had a perpetual hard on. Now I'm just massively deoressed because i wont be alive to witness us meet our distant galactic cousins

Gliese 581 d is the one most likely to support life

 

[Mr.Squirrel]

There is a probability of maybe 50% there is life on Europa.
All the evidence points to liquid water (the first extraterrestrial subsurface ocean of liquid water) under the ice. Kind of like Lake Vostok here on Earth.

In this liquid water it is theorized there may exist microbial life.
Problem is, it's pretty hard getting to Europa and it's even harder to penetrate the ice.


Gliese 581 d is the one most likely to support life

pfft nerd

lol

 

[expy]

There is a probability of maybe 50% there is life on Europa.
All the evidence points to liquid water (the first extraterrestrial subsurface ocean of liquid water) under the ice. Kind of like Lake Vostok here on Earth.

In this liquid water it is theorized there may exist microbial life.
Problem is, it's pretty hard getting to Europa and it's even harder to penetrate the ice.


Gliese 581 d is the one most likely to support life

Would be tough to analyze life (if it exists) underneath the icy crust. They would have to dig through, and somehow, prevent the liquid water it reaches, from freezing... And prevent ice from re-forming in the hole it dug...

 

[AndersTheSwede]

Titan and Rhea
On October 27, 2009, Cassini caught Titan passing in front of the icy moon Rhea. The sequence was captured only in clear filters; amateur Gordan Ugarkovic used a different image to colorize Titan. Titan's smoggy haze discolors icy Rhea as the smaller moon passes behind the larger one. Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI / colorization by Gordan Ugarkovic

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002186/

 

[RSP]

I was looking out the window and noticed that the Moon was really bright this evening. I took out my camera, put on my 300mm zoom lens, and took a couple of pictures

According to Wolframalpha, the Moon was at 99.82% illumination at the time of the pictures!

 

[Borman]

Awesome Was planning on doing that once I finally get a zoom lens for myself.

 

[KimiNewt]

If we're posting moon pics, I have a few at hand though admittedly they're not very good.
Here and here.

 

[Veidt]

Looking at all the craters in the moon, makes me think we need to protect it better.

 

[Walshicus]

I was looking out the window and noticed that the Moon was really bright this evening. I took out my camera, put on my 300mm zoom lens, and took a couple of pictures

According to Wolframalpha, the Moon was at 99.82% illumination at the time of the pictures!

http://i33.tinypic.com/t655hw.jpg

Hah, I saw that! Someone amusingly interupted themselves in a meeting today around 17:00 to say "bloody hell that moon's huge". Wanted to throw in a "that's no moon..." line, but thought better of it.

 

[RSP]

Looking at all the craters in the moon, makes me think we need to protect it better.

Do you see the darker areas on the Moon? These were from when a giant meteor impacted, re-heating almost a third of its surface, only a couple of hundred thousand years ago.

That baby can sure take a hit!

 

[Crazymoogle]

Do you see the darker areas on the Moon? These were from when a giant meteor impacted, re-heating almost a third of its surface, only a couple of hundred thousand years ago.

That baby can sure take a hit!

That's just one of the cool things about the Moon, though. It doesn't just influence things like the tide; it also acts as an orbiting damage sink, luring junk away from out own atmosphere. It's not perfect, but I don't think we really want to deal with the effects of a body with an even more powerful gravitational mass...

 

[RSP]

That's just one of the cool things about the Moon, though. It doesn't just influence things like the tide; it also acts as an orbiting damage sink, luring junk away from out own atmosphere. It's not perfect, but I don't think we really want to deal with the effects of a body with an even more powerful gravitational mass...

I suppose it would provide a situation much like that of a Binary System. The two bodies would revolve around each other for a long time, but would ultimately collide.

The moon already has a rather large mass. It also causes the Earth to deviate from its orbit around the sun a a little bit. These small deviations have an influence on how we experience the climate for instance.

 

[McNei1y]

The size of the universe is both a blessing and a curse. So big we can never hope to visit even a moderate amount of it, and yet by virtue of its size we can literally see what the universe looked like across vast eons. Some of these spectacular images were several billion years in the making and we frail and fleeting mortals are still so privileged as to see them with our own eyes.

The universe is a pretty wonderful place.

This may sound like a stupid question to me and I don't know the answer but, since we can see galaxies many many many light years away and in doing that, we see them 'in the past' basically, since light travels and we see what it looked like at that time... anyway, is there anyway we know what they could/would look like today? Could some/most of them be gone and would we know / not know?

 

[RSP]

This may sound like a stupid question to me and I don't know the answer but, since we can see galaxies many many many light years away and in doing that, we see them 'in the past' basically, since light travels and we see what it looked like at that time... anyway, is there anyway we know what they could/would look like today? Could some/most of them be gone and would we know / not know?

All stars (and on a larger scale, galaxies) have a certain lifespan. When a star "burns up" and turns into a super nova (note, this is only the case if a star is large, or massive enough), it basically scatters itself into space. These materials will in time be pulled towards other materials to form a new body.

This is what we call a second, or third generation star.

So yeah, the star we "see" at 10 billion light years away, is probably not there anymore.

 

[Extollere]

All stars (and on a larger scale, galaxies) have a certain lifespan. When a star "burns up" and turns into a super nova (note, this is only the case if a star is large, or massive enough), it basically scatters itself into space. These materials will in time be pulled towards other materials to form a new body.

This is what we call a second, or third generation star.

So yeah, the star we "see" at 10 billion light years away, is probably not there anymore.

But many of the galaxies might still be there. Maybe in a different formation from collisions or other catastrophe

Watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QPKIqDuIFQ#t=3m16s

Hrmm the last bit of the video gets cut off, but it shows that stars die out and are reborn out of the dust trails behind them (as they rotate around) you can see a snippet of the animation at the very end.

 

[CorporalDork]

Anyone seen this?

Largest Photo Of Our Universe Ever

It's as the link description says.

I can't seem to find any source for the high res version, can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

[C.Dark.DN]

Anyone seen this?

Largest Photo Of Our Universe Ever

It's as the link description says.

I can't seem to find any source for the high res version, can anyone point me in the right direction?

website doesn't work for me... i use firefox on default settings... http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cookieabsent.html

 

[AniHawk]

Go here instead: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/action/showStoryContent?doi=10.1086//pr.2009.010.28.2486

 

[Gr1mLock]

wow the Saturn pics are too much..pondering the scale of it all literally is making the lining of my skull burn

 

[Tenkai Star]

Obligatory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVshkVF0SY

:lol

 

[Mr.Squirrel]

Amazing movie of how they replaced parts on the Hubble telescope. I didn't know Hubble was responsible for the Deep Field Image or the Pillars of God. Can't believe they actually thought about letting it die...

Hubble's Amazing Rescue
NOVA | PBS

http://video.pbs.org/video/1294298696/

The unlikely story about how the world's most beloved telescope was saved

 

[Extollere]

I can't seem to find any source for the high res version, can anyone point me in the right direction?

http://141.209.165.197/~axel/mwpan2/mwpan2_Merc_2000x1200.jpg right click, save as.

It's cool, but IMO it's not nearly as nice as the one from Gigagalaxyzoom, taken by Serge Brunier. There is really a huge difference to me.

http://www.eso.org/gallery/d/136986-2/phot-32a-09-fullres.jpg

 

[itxaka]

Glad to found this thread thanks to Extollere, it's amazing to find so many pics of the universe together.

Seriously, sometime I really would have love to be born in 2k/4k years from now in order to be able to know more about the universe. It's a shame that I will die one day and still won't know even a 0,001% of what is out there.

 

[xbhaskarx]

I'm not sure if this has already been posted or not...

 

[Tony Rocky Horror]

I'm not sure if this has already been posted or not...

That's fucking rad.

 

[funk0ar]

Fuck I wish I had a 30 inch monitor or something that would be my desktop forever!

 

[Scrow]

Martian landscapes

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/martian_landscapes.html

more pics at the link with explanations of what you're looking at.

 

[Veidt]

Fireball Meteor Over Groningen

This is absolutely amazing. I'm glad I'm alive.

 

[Orgun]

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1513.html

The Birth of Stars

The spectacular new camera installed on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope during Servicing Mission 4 in May has delivered the most detailed view of star birth in the graceful, curving arms of the nearby spiral galaxy M83.

Nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel, M83 is undergoing more rapid star formation than our own Milky Way galaxy, especially in its nucleus. The sharp 'eye' of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) has captured hundreds of young star clusters, ancient swarms of globular star clusters, and hundreds of thousands of individual stars, mostly blue supergiants and red supergiants.

WFC3's broad wavelength range, from ultraviolet to near-infrared, reveals stars at different stages of evolution, allowing astronomers to dissect the galaxy's star-formation history.

The image reveals in unprecedented detail the current rapid rate of star birth in this famous "grand design" spiral galaxy. The newest generations of stars are forming largely in clusters on the edges of the dark dust lanes, the backbone of the spiral arms. These fledgling stars, only a few million years old, are bursting out of their dusty cocoons and producing bubbles of reddish glowing hydrogen gas.

The excavated regions give a colorful "Swiss cheese" appearance to the spiral arm. Gradually, the young stars' fierce winds (streams of charged particles) blow away the gas, revealing bright blue star clusters. These stars are about 1 million to 10 million years old. The older populations of stars are not as blue.

A bar of stars, gas, and dust slicing across the core of the galaxy may be instigating most of the star birth in the galaxy's core. The bar funnels material to the galaxy's center, where the most active star formation is taking place. The brightest star clusters reside along an arc near the core.

The remains of about 60 supernova blasts, the deaths of massive stars, can be seen in the image, five times more than known previously in this region. WFC3 identified the remnants of exploded stars. By studying these remnants, astronomers can better understand the nature of the progenitor stars, which are responsible for the creation and dispersal of most of the galaxy's heavy elements.

M83, located in the Southern Hemisphere, is often compared to M51, dubbed the Whirlpool galaxy, in the Northern Hemisphere. Located 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra, M83 is two times closer to Earth than M51.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), B. Whitmore (Space Telescope Science Institute), M. Dopita (Australian National University), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee

 

[Mr.Squirrel]

Martian landscapes

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/martian_landscapes.html

more pics at the link with explanations of what you're looking at.

incredible

 

[besada]

Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine

Even as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration continues to flounder in a search for its future, Dr. Friedman announced Monday that the Planetary Society, with help from an anonymous donor, would be taking baby steps toward a future worthy of science fiction. Over the next three years, the society will build and fly a series of solar-sail spacecraft dubbed LightSails, first in orbit around the Earth and eventually into deeper space.

The voyages are an outgrowth of a long collaboration between the society and Cosmos Studios of Ithaca, N.Y., headed by Ann Druyan, a film producer and widow of the late astronomer and author Carl Sagan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/space/10solar.html?pagewanted=1&hpw

 

[Lost Fragment]

 

[ShinHayase]

I bow to this thread. So amazing.

 

[Windu]

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=41052