Space stuff thread

[Anak]

John Glenn, American Hero of the Space Age, Dies at 95 (1921-2016)

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yep Steve very sad but I guess all the old spcies are getting on eh? Buzz Aldrin in our news just recently having to be got out of Antarctica Buzz Aldrin Leaves New Zealand Hospital After South Pole Scare - NBC News

 

[Anak]

Yes they are John, yea, I heard about Buzz being evacted out of wayyy down under. Altitude sickness can be serious for any age, especially for Buzz at 86.

The weather for Amundsen-Scott (2835m) Station they're pretty high at 2835m (9301.181 feet) look at that 975pressure.
That would make a pretty good coastal storm for us.

 

[Anak]

December Solstice Wednesday, December 21, 2016

December Solstice........ Some things you may not have known.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

December Solstice........ Some things you may not have known.

Yep that is a good read mate and it reminds me that if you didn't know I did watch a documentary or a DVD a while ago that if the Earth did not have that tilt there would be no life forms here

 

[mjf]

I did watch a documentary or a DVD a while ago that if the Earth did not have that tilt there would be no life forms here

I didn't realize that before!
Axis Tilt is Critical for Life
So all those planets outside of our solar system not only need to be the right distance from their sun but need an appropriate rotational tilt to support our form of life. I don't think we can determine rotational tilt of distant planets. Earth's tilt appears optimal for life.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yes mate it was explained in the documentary and I think it had something to do with the way the seasons are set and yes if the planet has a 90 degree "list" facing the sun it probably does mean it will not hold life.

That is a nice link too and I saw just the other week another program telling us the moon is moving away from us I think it was around 3cm per year.

 

[Anak]

I don't think we can determine rotational tilt of distant planets.

The axial tilt of the Earth has been known for a surprisingly long time. The first reasonably accurate measurements were made in China and India. The first (that we know of) was made in 1100 B.C. (over 3000 years ago!) by Chou Li. The next set of measurements came from greek geographers about 750 years later...

....The paths of the planets was carefully observed by Tycho Brahe in the late 1500s. Following Brahe's death in 1601, Johannes Kepler used the data to develop a set of laws that govern the way the planets move around the Sun (he proposed them in 1609).
These laws, (creatively) called Kepler's Laws, still hold today. Combining Brahe's observations and Kepler's laws of planetary motion, we can infer the axial tilt. Brahe's calculations are probably the first modern, western measurements of the tilt of Earth's axis...

Source: Who (and when) discovered that the earth's axis is on a 23 degree tilt? (Intermediate)

Earth's axial tilt was the first to be determined, the other planets of the solar system took longer because it took longer to make the observations to determine the tilt.

So it follows that it will take longer to make observations of "distant planets" to determine each of their characteristics. There have already been findings of axial tilt for some exoplanets, look under the Inc. (Deg.) column of the chart here: List of exoplanets - Wikipedia

The Hubble Deep Field pictures were not taken with just one snap, but over a period of 10days for HDF and 56 for HUDF

 

[mjf]

It appears you can determine the tilt of exoplanets.
Explainer: How to find an exoplanet (part 1)

 

[Anak]

Great find Mike, bookmarked!

 

[Anak]

Vera Rubin, Who Confirmed Existence Of Dark Matter, Dies At 88

"It was Vera Rubin's famous work in the 1970s that showed pretty much all spiral galaxies were spinning way too fast to be accounted for by the gravitational pull of the their 'luminous' matter (the stuff we see in a telescope). Rubin and others reasoned there had to be a giant sphere of invisible stuff surrounding the stars in these galaxies, tugging on them and speeding up their orbits around the galaxy's center."

Source: Vera Rubin, Who Confirmed Existence Of Dark Matter, Dies At 88

Vera Rubin: (July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016)

 

[Anak]

February 10 / February 11, 2017 — Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

From post #121 in 10Forums:

The penumbral lunar eclipse will be visible from Europe, most of Asia, Africa and most of North America.
Source: Time and Date | Feb 10, 2017 at 22:34:14 UTC

Remember to adjust your time against the UTC time. In my case I'm -5hours or 17:34:14 = 5:34:14pm EST. Scroll down a bit to, Where to See the Eclipse and click on Expand for cities where penumbral eclipse is visible to help adjust your time, or use this time zone map. Ask for help if you're not sure.

 

[Barman58]

Not sure if this has been posted recently, but is one scary site

Stuff in Space

 

[kado897]

 

[Anak]

Scary indeed! It's the first I've seen it Nigel.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Not sure if this has been posted recently, but is one scary site

Stuff in Space

Yes Nigel I saw something very similar to this a while ago and I often wonder how this stuff (the stuff in the one I saw was satellites) do not collide with each other and more so it must be technically quite difficult to thread a rocket say one with a space probe through this all to deploy it.:shock:

 

[Barman58]

If you have the time set it to show Rocket Body, it's amazing to see what's still up there

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hmm did you mean something like in this article?
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/orbital/

 

[Barman58]

On the link I posted just click on some of the Blue dots ... and some interesting descriptions are displayed - Titan and Ariane are two I recognise

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hmm I just noticed too that moving the cursor around in that cloud of stuff gives you a readout of what satellite it is and something else too that some are not just circular orbits many are elliptical!!