The Enlightening Science Thread

It is a good idea that the U.S. doesn't put all of their eggs *in one basket* and do not rely on Russia to ferry cosmonauts/astronauts to the ISS, or elsewhere.

For now, China, India, and the EU have the capability to boost a package to the ISS, its just a matter of reliability and diplomacy, so, the U.S. should do something, in the interim.
I'm just hoping that other matters of State can remain on the back burner, but Dream Chaser? How 'bout the ISS-TAXI?

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Since no one has posted the radar pics of 2014 HQ124, you may peruse this at your leisure:

(Phys.org) —NASA scientists using Earth-based radar have produced sharp views of a recently discovered asteroid as it slid silently past our planet. Captured on June 8, 2014, the new views of the object designated "2014 HQ124" are some of the most detailed radar images of a near-Earth asteroid ever obtained.

An animation of the rotating asteroid and a collage of the images are available below.

The radar observations were led by scientists Marina Brozovic and Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. The JPL researchers worked closely with Michael Nolan, Patrick Taylor, Ellen Howell and Alessondra Springmann at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to plan and execute the observations.

According to Benner, 2014 HQ124 appears to be an elongated, irregular object that is at least 1,200 feet (370 meters) wide on its long axis. "This may be a double object, or 'contact binary,' consisting of two objects that form a single asteroid with a lobed shape," he said. The images reveal a wealth of other features, including a puzzling pointy hill near the object's middle, on top as seen in the images.

The 21 radar images were taken over a span of four-and-a-half hours. During that interval, the asteroid rotated a few degrees per frame, suggesting its rotation period is slightly less than 24 hours.

At its closest approach to Earth on June 8, the asteroid came within 776,000 miles (1.25 million kilometers), or slightly more than three times the distance to the moon. Scientists began observations of 2014 HQ124 shortly after the closest approach, when the asteroid was between about 864,000 miles and 902,000 miles (1.39 million kilometers and 1.45 million kilometers) from Earth.
Each image in the collage and movie represents 10 minutes of data.......

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..........To obtain the new views, researchers paired the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, with two other radio telescopes, one at a time. Using this technique, the Goldstone antenna beams a radar signal at an asteroid and the other antenna receives the reflections. The technique dramatically improves the amount of detail that can be seen in radar images.

Read more at: Giant telescopes pair up to image near-Earth asteroid (w/ video)

You will see four repeats of the video; They are 18 to 20 frames in 11secs by my 'reckon (20frames in the lead Powerpoint)....Presentation goes to Powerpoint end at 0:42; Total time 0:52

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It's weird, I just noticed 2014 HQ124 looks like a potato I baked the other day.

First was disbelieve-ment , then I didn't know what to think, , but it all worked out to a fine meal.


Ah....The mysteries of the Universe,


Clear Skies everyone, Happy Father's Day!


Steve

NASA figures out how to smell Uranus (and other planets)

What do aliens smell like? Both George Lucas and Douglas Adams have theorized that they might have bad B.O. (especially on the inside!) but the reality is that an alien moon, planet, or species could smell like just about anything. Statistically speaking, it’s almost certain that somewhere out there is a planet that smells like rotten eggs, and another that smells like freshly cooked bread; one might smell like lung-destroying acid, and another like a big wet dog. But knowing that such scents are out there is a far cry from knowing where they are, or what creates the smell. Now, NASA has a solution to this “problem.”

Source

A Guy

Just what I wanted research time to go for Bill. LOL!
I suspect Earth would be fairly stinky to aliens too.

Not seen in the original live broadcast.

October 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner ascended more than 24 miles above Earth's surface to the edge of space in a stratospheric balloon. Millions across the globe watched as he opened the door of the capsule, stepped off the platform, and broke the speed of sound while free falling safely back to Earth.

Thanks to Dennis for the email.

Curiosity rover takes Mars selfie on first birthday

While the rover itself has technically been in service for far longer than a year, its Mars visit has now lasted one full Martian cycle. That’s a whole cycle around the sun for Mars, also known as a Martian year. To celebrate, the NASA Mars Curiosity rover stretched one of its arms out to take a lovely selfie.

In Earth days, the Curiosity mission has lasted over two years. That’s 687 Earth days and far more than that if you count the time it took for the rover to arrive on the planet.

Source

A Guy

Strange thing about the selfie, there should be visible the arm supporting the camera.

You're right Gary, the other anomaly is, there is no shadow of the arm holding that camera.

The only explanation I can think of is, at 1:35 into the video Heverly, the Rover Driver describes the selfie process as a Molly (malie?) of a series of pictures that it stitched together to take the self-portrait.

Unless someone else can come up with the definition for *Molly* I'm at a dead-end for now. I searched scientific and photography terms for molly, but no luck. I briefly thought that it might be slang for the dental term *amalgam - a mixture* but I think that would be stretching it.

See 1:35 in...



I did find this describing the cameras and the process's used. At 2:45 in it goes into detail about the "selfie", but still no explanation for "Molly".




I did tweet: https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/with_replies asking what is a Molly and why there are no shadows, I await their answer.


Me thinks there was some Photoshopping during the stitching process.

Found it finally Steve, it's not "molly" but "MAHLI"

Curiosity used its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera, mounted on a turret at the end of its arm, for the self-portrait. The test rover used an engineering model of MAHLI. The rover's arm, about 7 feet (2.1 meters) long, does not appear in the image. It was positioned out of the shot in the images or portions of images used in the mosaic.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16458.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/14/nasa_explains_curioisty_self_portraits/

Looking at the selfie more I think I made a discovery or two.



One from the lab with the Curiosity tester.



The video does explain why the arm is not in the shots.



Here's one I found if you look carefully at the support mechanism you can see a bit of the arm fading away. It appears to be in the same location but a different pic. Click it and then again when it opens, it's very hi-res.



Otherwise if this can't explain it, Curiosity is in Area 51.

Thanks for figuring out that MAHLI acronym Gary.

I think the NASA reveals secrets of Curiosity's selfies ? The Register explains what is perplexing, see underlined:

MAHLI is mounted on a turret at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm. The arm is not visible in the portrait because the arm was positioned out of the shot in the images or portions of images used in the mosaic. Some images taken during the day show portions of the arm. However, the Martian ground that the arm hides from view in those images is visible in alternative images chosen for the mosaic, taking the arm out of the scene.

Here's more:

Aside from the fact that the image is aesome, I'm glad they posted a new one of these because it gives me the chance to try to explain again how this photo was made. When I posted Curiosity's first self-portrait, I got an awful lot of questions asking where the arm was. I answered that since the camera is on the arm, most of the arm was always out of the frame of the image, but that didn't seem to reduce people's confusion any.

So let me try two other approaches to answering that question.
First of all, here is a mosaic of all 64 of the MAHLI photos, except this time, they're not blended, they're just laid out as tiles. It should give you an appreciation for the work it took for Ed Truthan to assemble the above pictures so seamlessly.
Source: A new rover self-portrait and a new color image of Curiosity from orbit | The Planetary Society

Then the Author of the blog, Emily Lakdawlla goes on to explain further and shows the arm pictures that were omitted in the pix below this mosaic.

The mosaic used:



Image source: A new rover self-portrait and a new color image of Curiosity from orbit | The Planetary Society

From Comments section of image source (second comment):

Steven Lawrence: 02/04/2013 06:38 CST
I think the confusion about the arm goes away for a lot of people when they realize it's a mosaic; that Curiosity wasn't taking a single shot from a long extended arm, like a person would when snapping a self-pic, and that most of the images taken by Curiosity were localized. Great job by Ed Truthan.

There are a lot of comments in every article I've seen about this that don't understand why there isn't an arm shadow and there isn't one in the mosaic either.

I'm going to stop thinking about this for now. I don't have the training to understand 360° panoramic mosaic picture editing, and I've burned out too many brain cells already.

Stitching pictures together is very hard to do manually. You see with 64 images there is a lot of overlapping, so some can be chosen to be on top of others to "mask" out the arm or other unwanted stuff.