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Space: The Final Frontier

J

Jasup

Member
Alucrid said:
...am staying up for this.
Click to expand...
For me it's tomorrow morning, the moon sets 3 minutes after the full phase of the eclipse ends, 25 minutes after the sunrise. I should be able to see the first half of it.

Unless it's cloudy or snowing, which is a possibility...
 
I

ianp622

Member
McNei1y said:
I may be wrong but aren't the pictures of nebulas really fleshed out by artists? At least thats what I thought. I'm probably wrong though. And yeah, I agree about the Pluto pics... WTF?
Click to expand...
Some of them are colored according to their component gases. So it's not far off. Others, like Orion, you could see with your own telescope and decent camera.

Here's a picture my brother took of Orion, using a Teleview 101 on a Vixen Great Polaris mount and a Rebel XT. The only Photoshop'ing is stacking multiple images to get better clarity and using contrast adjustments to bring out the color that is lost over the distance traveled to get here.

oza1O.jpg
 
A

Alucrid

Banned
Jasup said:
For me it's tomorrow morning, the moon sets 3 minutes after the full phase of the eclipse ends, 25 minutes after the sunrise. I should be able to see the first half of it.

Unless it's cloudy or snowing, which is a possibility...
Click to expand...

The prime time is at 3:30 am here. :\ Oh well, I'll just make some tea or something.
 
N

noah111

Still Alive
ianp622 said:
Some of them are colored according to their component gases. So it's not far off. Others, like Orion, you could see with your own telescope and decent camera.

Here's a picture my brother took of Orion, using a Teleview 101 on a Vixen Great Polaris mount and a Rebel XT. The only Photoshop'ing is stacking multiple images to get better clarity and using contrast adjustments to bring out the color that is lost over the distance traveled to get here.

http://i.imgur.com/oza1O.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]
Ugh, that's so amazing, and I say that every time I see shots by normal 'people'.. I mean, there is better wuality out there than that, but just knowing someone took that is sort of, inspiring.

It's what I want to do someday, get a scope, and take shots of space firsthand. How amazing must that feel to see your results.
Click to expand...
 
M

McNei1y

Member
ianp622 said:
Some of them are colored according to their component gases. So it's not far off. Others, like Orion, you could see with your own telescope and decent camera.

Here's a picture my brother took of Orion, using a Teleview 101 on a Vixen Great Polaris mount and a Rebel XT. The only Photoshop'ing is stacking multiple images to get better clarity and using contrast adjustments to bring out the color that is lost over the distance traveled to get here.

http://i.imgur.com/oza1O.jpg
Click to expand...

Okay, now that is awesome. I learn something new everyday! I wish this topic was updated everyday. I'm definitely playing Mass Effect 2 again.
 
J

Jasup

Member
Alucrid said:
The prime time is at 3:30 am here. :\ Oh well, I'll just make some tea or something.
Click to expand...
I'm lucky it's also winter solstice, partial eclipse starts at 8:30, moon enters full eclipse at 9:40, sun rises at 10:29... I don't even have to wake up particularly early.


I'll be working, yes. But if the weather is good, I'll take my students out to see the eclipse.
 
T

TOP SHOTTA

Member
McNei1y said:
I may be wrong but aren't the pictures of nebulas really fleshed out by artists? At least thats what I thought. I'm probably wrong though. And yeah, I agree about the Pluto pics... WTF?
Click to expand...

Yes, most of them unfortunately are interpretations based on what the gasses we (somehow) detect that we can see. A lot more these days use radio, I was just looking into this.

With binoculars, you can see the disc of Jupiter and Saturn. With a good scope, most of near planets can be found.

I think you can see a visible disc of gas giants Neptune and Uranus with a pro-level scope. I can't see them with mine. Though I swear once I saw Uranus and it looked like a blurry pea. I've never seen Neptune or Pluto.

I've read that some amateur astronomers have seen the disc of Pluto. Wow Pluto is TINY. And it is insanely far. I can't imagine they're seeing anything but the disk itself, with no detail, and with a very very good telescope

Pluto is smaller than Mercury. It is smaller than our own moon by about 1/4. And I think all we'll be able to get from our visit is a few views of a body that looks like the moon.

I am all for space stuff, but when we get to Pluto, great, but it interests me more that this tiny thing hasn't had a close enough encounter with Neptune to pull it in or frisbee it off & out of Sun's gravity field. I would have rather put every penny into putting a man on Mars or a colony on the moon than anything we pay to do throwaway experiments.

Jupiter's Europa, wow I hope we send a probe down to get through that ice and take a "sip". At the surface of our planet, its hard to get a test tube of ocean water that does not have some form of life in it. So if it's true what they say, that Europa is a big sheet of ice with ever changing craks... Lets poke a hole in it.

Mars, is there even any doubt anymore? One of rovers hasn't crashed into a Mars mastodon leg bone. Fine. but to me its only a matter of landing in the right place. I would be excited but not surprised to learn tomorrow that we found - anything. Bacteria will do. If we even so much as found a multi-celled organism with no exact match on Earth, people would go bananas. In a good way. A teeny salamander or basic fish fossil would make just about every scientist soil their lab coat.
 
T

TOP SHOTTA

Member
Speaking of the "Artist's Interpretations" of some objects in space, and how we're using, radio astronomy, light, or at least wave detection and then coming up with spectacular images got me to thinking that they are probably more accurate than not. I believe the radio astronomers are accurate about color, bright spots where things are condensing, and things like that.

But we've also sent lots of things with real cameras, and real lenses, out into space.

We've been sending stuff into deep space about 40 years or so now. The first to Mars was a crash from a Soviet project. Later Mars trips had cameras, as you know, and they landed safely, and I've never been awestruck, except for one where you could see the curvature of Mars and a horizon.

So what kind of camera equipment are we putting on landers, satellites and especially probes? The ones we WILL NOT get back so we can develop the film or something. Have they all been variants of digital cameras? Early forays into that technology? And if so, what's the resolution been like? Are we talking 1980:1MP, 1990:2MP, 2000:5MP, 2010, 40MP? And with HD cameras I pray. Does anyone know how this has worked in any space program? I hope we've spent money on the best cameras possible on these things. I can't think of a better use.

EDIT: Googling this subject has not helped much in the past and didn't today. All I was able to surmise is that cameras aren't quite digital, and aren't quite standard in any way. There was a fairly good comparison about thinking of the cameras on probes as little radio stations - the images need to be converted to be radio signals and then sent back to Earth. But that still seems like it's digital photography. But I suppose if broadcast television was never considered to be digital photography, then this shouldn't. I am so confused. Still.
 
C

Crazymoogle

Member
Obviously with most old landers nothing like digital cameras existed, but the ability to encode analog image data into lines to send wasn't exactly magic either (we had been doing it for years with TV) The problem was more or less time to transmit; I think on Voyager 160bits was around max speed? And if their telemetry system is any hint to go off of, I'm guessing data was recorded to 8 track while images were sent as-it-went (I think the better cam was effectively 800x800, which was fine given the amount of time required to transmit)

Anyway the problem has never been megapixels or whatnot. Probes and landers need to be extremely durable (particularly against massive temperature change and radiation), and they need a pretty big variety of instruments of limited weight and size. You can't rely on a camera in space to necessarily change aperture or zoom; hell, the time to contact it could be hours to weeks. Venera (Soviet venus probes) infamously had a problem where the lens cap failed to dislodge upon landing.

Today's probes and landers have much better equipment, but rarely state-of-the-art, specifically because of the protection and reliability steps. It's the same reason why you don't see Core i7's on the ISS (although in space the much bigger immediate problem is that you can't disperse heat as easily.) If your camera fails in 30 days because of heat problems, circuit problems, or just random radiation frying the battery, then it's not worth the actual cost to put it up there. (I think the cost per kg quoted to just go to space today is 15k?) Landers have to also deal with the problem of debris. Mars and the Moon both have pretty infamous amounts of dust and sand, enough to permanently damage an off-the-shelf camera beyond repair in short order.

Distance is also a factor. Obviously Voyager sucks for data transfer, while the Moon is in an ideal spot. I think Mars Odyssey did 128kbit/s? I'm not sure the power module can support constant transmission, but even if it can, imagine sending a 10MP image over that. (And that's not even getting into data redundancy issues)
 
T

TOP SHOTTA

Member
I want to add that in my googling, I was led in a roundabout way, right back here. I posted it about 3 years ago. It was not answered.

The amount of scientific knowledge in this thread is incredible. With that being said, is there seriously nobody that has any idea about this?

A little bit off topic, but I read one of the strangest conspiracy theories I've ever heard:
Thata Russian mission to mars ran into some really strange problems. Around the same time we had discovered that Phobos is accelerating in orbit(really, really weird). There are some still classified photos of something hitting Russia's probe. At that point they believed it was hollow. And that it was a mothership or generation ship of some kind. Later when we went we found it's just very pourous. I love me a good conspiracy theory, stupid or not. But things like that make me wonder why they don't just declassify the photos and have everyone shut up. 'Yeah. America, we lost some people in our space program. We were also very ambitious and crashed a sedan sized vehicle from 35,000,000 miles away. What are you guys up to by the way?"

Edit. OOPS! Thank you for the reply but I bet the newest stuff can change a lot of settings when needed. Anything being built now surely would, right?
 
F

fallout

Member
Generally speaking, cameras are about the worst thing to put on a satellite/rover in terms of scientific benefit. It takes up precious weight and space that could be used for real scientific instrumentation. NASA is continually at odds with pretty pictures and science. I think both are important, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
fallout said:
Generally speaking, cameras are about the worst thing to put on a satellite/rover in terms of scientific benefit. It takes up precious weight and space that could be used for real scientific instrumentation. NASA is continually at odds with pretty pictures and science. I think both are important, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere.
Click to expand...
True, but if you want to sell the public to gain more funding, pretty pictures always help.
 
M

moist

Member
Crazymoogle said:
Distance is also a factor. Obviously Voyager sucks for data transfer, while the Moon is in an ideal spot. I think Mars Odyssey did 128kbit/s? I'm not sure the power module can support constant transmission, but even if it can, imagine sending a 10MP image over that. (And that's not even getting into data redundancy issues)
Click to expand...


Mars Recon Orbiter has a 6 meg connection..... thats right my dsl is stuck at 3 while NASA has 6 meg all the way to fucking mars. FML.
 
C

Crazymoogle

Member
Yeah I heard that, I think that's due to the laser link, right?

(Having an orbital communicator is one of the single best improvements in these planet trips, by the way. Saves a lot of space for other junk on a lander and gives you a much better way to do high-speed data links. If we ever did another moon trip they would probably be set up for facebook ASAP. :lol )

awesomeapproved said:
But things like that make me wonder why they don't just declassify the photos and have everyone shut up. 'Yeah. America, we lost some people in our space program. We were also very ambitious and crashed a sedan sized vehicle from 35,000,000 miles away. What are you guys up to by the way?"
Click to expand...

Because NASA ain't the European Space Agency, basically. It's a government funded space program that reserves the right to:

a. Put the best face on whatever they show to improve their standing and ensure support.
b. Stop the public from being freaked out over something that either can't be immediately explained or would quickly turn into conspiracy theories anyway.
c. Avoid showing anything that may be classified by other agencies (eg: NSA, CIA) such as
other satellites. I'm sure in some cases it may be to avoid inadvertently giving other agencies (eg: China) a hint on what to build next, but it's mostly stuff like cargo or other satellites.
 
M

moist

Member
Looks like that is over X and Ka band microwave, but thats also according to the bastion of truth that is wikipedia so it could be wrong. I could have swore I read a while back that with the next set of probes they were going to have a 100 meg link to mars but i for the life of me can't find anything on it now.
 
T

Teknoman

Member
awesomeapproved said:
Yes, most of them unfortunately are interpretations based on what the gasses we (somehow) detect that we can see. A lot more these days use radio, I was just looking into this.

With binoculars, you can see the disc of Jupiter and Saturn. With a good scope, most of near planets can be found.
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to try that.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/12/30/when-natural-and-artificial-moons-align/

When natural and artificial moons align

A few hours before last week’s lunar eclipse started here in the States, the phenomenal astrophotographer (and frequent BA Blog photo contributor) Thierry Legault was in Normandy, France, and got a magnificent picture of a different sort of transit involving the Moon:

NIz4w.jpg


Wow. You definitely need to click to enlunanate and get the giant version. The full Moon would be enough to make this a nice picture, but look more carefully, just above the bright rayed crater Tycho. See that weird silhouette?

That’s the International Space Station! Thierry used software called CalSky to determine the exact time the ISS would pass in front of (transit) the Moon, and was able to snap this shot during the 0.55 seconds it took the artificial satellite to pass in front of the natural one. At the time, the station was 420 km (250 miles) away, yet the detail in the shot is astonishing. You can clearly make out the solar panels and trusses of the station.

fmpwj.jpg


Hmmm. Come to think of it, the Moon is about 380,000 km away, so it’s roughly 900 times more distant than the space station in this picture. However, it’s also 35,000 times bigger, so even its much greater distance doesn’t diminish its dominance in this photo. It’s a stark reminder that we’ve explored very little of the millions of square kilometers of lunar surface.

Also on his page, Thierry has a couple of gorgeous lunar eclipse images well worth your time to look at. In fact, just go to his site and poke around. Thank me later — much later, because you’ll be there a while.
Click to expand...
 
N

Naked Snake

Member
That photo is an instant classic and immediately jumped to my top favorites ever.

Today has been a good day.

Edit: Holy crap, that guy's site is full of amazing photos.
 
F

fallout

Member
Neverender said:
Could 'civilians' just go and watch the shuttle launches?
Click to expand...
I believe so, but you could probably check with NASA. Local astronomy clubs might also be able to get you a press pass. Keep in mind that the shuttle dates are not completely set in stone, because of the short window to launch for the ISS. Still, if you've got an excuse to go ... I'd say go for it.
 
W

Windu

never heard about the cat, apparently
OHM39.jpg

APOD-Looking Back at an Eclipsed Earth said:
Explanation: Here is what the Earth looks like during a solar eclipse. The shadow of the Moon can be seen darkening part of Earth. This shadow moved across the Earth at nearly 2000 kilometers per hour. Only observers near the center of the dark circle see a total solar eclipse - others see a partial eclipse where only part of the Sun appears blocked by the Moon. This spectacular picture of the 1999 August 11 solar eclipse was one of the last ever taken from the Mir space station. The two bright spots that appear on the upper left are thought to be Jupiter and Saturn. Mir was deorbited in a controlled re-entry in 2001.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110102.html
Click to expand...
 
J

Jasup

Member
So I went to see the partial solar eclipse today on top of a water tower nearby. Sun rose at 10:21 and the eclipse was in its peak at around 10:50. It would've been one hell of a sunrise to witness - an almost 85% eclipse just few degrees over the horizon.

However I was greeted with fog and cloudy skies. The furthest object I was able to see was another water tower around 7 kilometers away.
 
N

Neverender

Member
fallout said:
I believe so, but you could probably check with NASA. Local astronomy clubs might also be able to get you a press pass. Keep in mind that the shuttle dates are not completely set in stone, because of the short window to launch for the ISS. Still, if you've got an excuse to go ... I'd say go for it.
Click to expand...

Well I live in Australia but one day I'd like to see a launch of something in the future.
 
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