Space stuff thread

Tomorrow for me, today for others, there will be a Close Encounter with Enceladus .....

Oct 27, 2015:
Over 980 million miles or about 1.6 billion kilometers from home, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft hurtles through the starry expanse of space. From its vantage point orbiting Saturn, Earth is nothing more than a miniscule pinprick of light not unlike the stars framing the gorgeous ringed planet.

Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, and it has made dozens of flybys of Saturn’s intriguing moons. Its next close encounter with Enceladus on October 28, 2015 promises potentially exciting results.

Source: Close Encounter with Enceladus - NASA Science

Meanwhile, closer to our home planet.......

An asteroid the size of a football stadium will zoom past Earth on Halloween, in a close encounter that astronomers view as far more treat than trick.

The massive asteroid 2015 TB145 will come within 310,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) of the planet — or about 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the moon — on the afternoon of Oct. 31, just three weeks after the space rock was discovered, according to NASA. There's no threat of an impact on this pass, NASA officials said.

Astronomers estimate the diameter of 2015 TB145, which is also known as "Spooky," to be between 950 feet and 2,130 feet (290 to 650 meters). The Halloween flyby will mark the closest known encounter with such a big asteroid until August 2027, researchers said. [Potentially Dangerous Asteroids (Images)]

Source: Big 'Spooky' Asteroid to Fly by Earth on Halloween

Play the video on the space.com page to see how close it looks.

Three weeks! On this pass!

Lets not forget the last close encounter when an interloper not known at the time exploded over Russia, remember Chelyabinsk?

Oct 31, 2015:
When the Space Age began, there was no such thing as a “graphical user interface.” Astronauts interacted with their electronics using only knobs and toggle switches. It was a different time. Fast forward to 2015.
The knobs and switches of the 1950s have been replaced by a glass cockpit, where the majority of commanding is done through software controls. Old-fashioned twisting and flipping may soon be replaced by a complex combination of taps, swipes, and finger-tip swirls.

Source: http://Using a Tablet Computer in Space | science.nasa.gov/science-news

If anyone is interested

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

features
sky
default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
constellations for 20+ different cultures
images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
realistic Milky Way
very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
the planets and their satellites
interface
a powerful zoom
time control
multilingual interface
fisheye projection for planetarium domes
spheric mirror projection for your own low-cost dome
all new graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
telescope control
visualisation
equatorial and azimuthal grids
star twinkling
shooting stars
eclipse simulation
supernovae simulation
skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection
customizability
plugin system adding artifical satellites, ocular simulation, telescope configuration and more
ability to add new solar system objects from online resources...
add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...

Stellarium

FAQ - Stellarium Wiki

A Guy

Great program Bill, I've been using it since v0.11.4 (2012-08-25) I'm now up to v0.13.3 there have been bug reports about some rendering problems, but I haven't noticed any on my lowly i3 Intel even though Stellarium complains about it in the logs.

Your link to the Stellarium page offers the latest stable version 0.14.0. Windows users, make sure when downloading to use the proper 32 or 64 bit rate for your version of Windows.


Overview of version 0.14.0 with some already known bugs

There is also a version on the portableapps.com platform. That is at v13.3

I'm always late to the party

A Guy