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The Big Space Exploration Topic [21-08-2017: Total Solar Eclipse in the USA!]

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  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    Well, we had a pretty rough party last week and didn't really now where to put the trash, so...

    Just joking. ;-)
    I'm interested too, @Gustav! So many mysteries yet to explore.
    Unfortunately half the world prefers to fight wars and the other half cares more about USA Got Talent. Only a minor few are lucky enough to care about what lies outside our pitiful little globe.

    I do so agree. All the news about the upcoming 'Grexit'makes me angry and pessimistic about the future of Europe and the EU. I fear a 1929-esque scenario.

    So I'm glad space exploration is still among us :-). This is what humans should look at to get inspired!
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    Pluto-Charon_System.gif
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    Pluto gets brighter and brighter!
    pluto-heart-new-horizons.jpg?1436376724
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,256
    I love these images. I LOVE THEM!!!

    I wish we could just probe down on Pluto and Charon, take samples, pictures, ...
    I'd love to know what living on one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter would be like. Isaac Asimov once described what it must feel like - though I have forgotten which moon exactly he had chosen for his essay - based on our scientific knowledge. And it sounded good.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    edited July 2015 Posts: 45,489
    Ganymede perhaps?
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,256
    I looked it up. He talks about the amazing view from all the major Jovian satellites.

    Asimov, by the way, is the man who gave me the space bug. ;-)
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    How does it transfer? I am not judgmental at all.
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    I looked it up. He talks about the amazing view from all the major Jovian satellites.

    Asimov, by the way, is the man who gave me the space bug. ;-)

    For me, Star Trek and Arthur C. Clarke gave the space bug :-P.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,256
    Clarke is fabulous and a symbol for all free spirited people. I love the man he was. He was positive about everything.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    Guys, please download this magnificent app from NASA's JPL-website! It's astonishing! Only 22 more hours to go until the closest flyby!

    http://eyes.nasa.gov/eyes-on-pluto.html
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    I just witnessed the closest approach to Pluto a few minutes ago. And I made this printscreen from the "Eyes-on-Pluto"-app:

    kioXdw.jpg

    As you can see, the closest approach to Pluto was 12,512 km or 7,776 miles. New Horizons also made pictures from its moons Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.

    Later today the Australia collection point will relay the first detailed pictures of the Pluto-Charon-system (Officially now a binary dwarf-planet system)
  • AceHoleAceHole Belgium, via Britain
    edited July 2015 Posts: 1,731
    Hawking:
    "Time within our universe is an elastic concept - it is non-linear and and malleable, the length of minutes, hours and even years are both expanding and receding simultaneously... essentially, time is in the eye of the beholder..."

    Bartender to Hawking:
    "That's all good and well, Stephen, but I'm still closing the bar at 1am, so drink up, mate"
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    edited July 2015 Posts: 11,119
    Wow, what a beautiful little planet.....ehhh....dwarf planet! First picture of today's flyby, and this was still 900,000 km away! Pluto seems as 'red' as Mars, perhaps a little bit more white.

    CJ37eXjW8AAp6kh.png:large

    And with little brother Charon:

    nh-color-pluto-cha_3374808b.jpg

    And the person who discovered Pluto, Mr Clyde Tombaugh:
    clyde_3374535b.jpg
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,256
    Are those apps available for Windows too? ;-)
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    Are those apps available for Windows too? ;-)

    Ooowh yes, I have an old Sony Vaio with Windows Vista hehe :-). And it worked perfectly on it :-).

    Here's another great picture of Pluto:
    P_LORRI_FULLFRAME_COLOR.png

  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    New pictures of Pluto and Charon!

    A full picture of Charon:
    nh-charon.jpg

    Mountain terrain on Pluto:
    nh-pluto-surface-scale.jpg

    And a movie about Pluto:
    http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/common/content/videos/dataMovies/plutozoomanimationV2.mp4
  • RogueAgentRogueAgent
    Posts: 12,526
    Simply stunning images!!!
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,256
    Yeah, this is monumental! I wish we could have such detailed pictures of the surface of Venus, or the interior of Jupiter. But I'm pleased beyond measure with these images of Pluto.
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    What I find incredible about the zoomed-in picture from Pluto's southern most point, is the fact that its mostly devoid of craters. Instead....we see a huge plain flat area....and on the right high mountains, which look a bit like Earth's Alps. NASA said these mountains could be around 3,500 m's high.

    In any case, it shows that Pluto is way more active, geologically. And therefore it's also way more "new" due to the lack of craters.
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    The heart-shapen space on Pluto has now been named the 'Sputnik Planum'. The region is completely lacking craters. Here's a zoomed in picture of it. It looks like a tundra-plain:

    04_moore_02c.jpg

    Here an incredible real-life, real color image of the binary planetary system Pluto-Charon. One can see here how close Charon is 'attached' to Pluto:

    pluto-and-charon-01.jpg

    Pluto has got a nitrogen-rich atmosphere. An atmosphere thats even more dense as opposed to Mars. Its nitrogen is heavily influenced by the sunrise and sunset:

    02_gladstone_02.jpg

    Please visit http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/index.php for more incredible scientific news.
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    Hold on to your seats. Tomorrow at 9:00 o'clock PDT NASA will make a very big announcement. It appears that the "Earth-Like Planet Hunter", telescope Kepler, made a huge discovery. There will be a full press conference tomorrow:

    http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/another-earth-nasa-hints-at-planetary-discovery-1.2481555
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,256
    @Gustav_Graves

    Now you've made me curious!!!
    Keep me posted, will you? :-)
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    Ladies and gentleman. NASA has found a near-perfect Earth-like planet. It was announced today in a crowded press conference. And in almost every aspect the newly discovered exoplanet, Kepler-452B, could be called a sister of Earth. It's located in a near-perfect so called "Goldilock-Zone". Down below an impression of Kepler-452B as compared to Earth:

    452b_artistconcept_comparisonwithearth.jpg
    fig5-scale_of_452_system.jpg
    Illustration-Kepler-452b-def-small.jpg

    Why is it so Earth-like?
    --> Kepler-452B receives almost the same amount of (solar) energy from its sun as compared to Earth and our Sun. Slightly more to be precise: 10%
    --> Kepler-452B is orbiting its sun at a distance of 1,045 AU (1 AU = 149.597.870.700 m), whereas Earth is exactly 1,000 AU removed from the Sun:
    156.329.775.000 m: Distance Kepler-452B <--> Star
    149.597.870.700 m: Distance Earth <--> Sun
    --> Kepler-452B has a diameter that is 60% bigger as compared to Earth's diameter. It is roughly 1.5 times bigger as Earth
    --> Kepler-452B finishes its orbit around its sun in 485 days, roughly 20 days more as Earth's year of 365 days
    --> Kepler-452B is 5 times the mass of Earth, so it could be a bit difficult walking on there (perhaps its magnetic field therefore could be stronger)
    --> Kepler-452B is slightly older than Earth; 6 Billion years as opposed to Earth's 4.5 Billion years
    --> Kepler-452B's surface temperature is between 0 and 50 Degrees Celcius (between 32 and 122 Degrees Fahrenheit). So it's more or less the same as Earth's surface temperature
    --> Conclusion: Based on the above scientific facts Kepler-452B seems to be a sister-planet to Earth. Only problem: It's 1400 lightyears removed from Earth, in the constellation Swan (Cygnus). But NASA says this is a milestone nonetheless. Earth is not unique anymore. NASA expects in the next 10 years to find more of these planets, more closer to Earth. And within 50 years NASA expects to make the very first real picture of an Earth-like planet. For now we should be happy for Mother Earth. She has a bigger sister :-)!

    More information you can read here, by following this link to the official site of the Kepler Telescope:
    http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=393

    hec_orbit_Kepler-452_b.jpg
    fig11-12_new_hz_candidates.jpg?itok=DUXmMgCU
    keplersmallhzplanets.jpg?itok=0CRRMfbC
    fig3-searchinghabwrlds.jpg?itok=QKVZ9qI1
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    In the meanwhile, the NASA New Horizons probe continues to baffle us. Here are, again, new, sharper pictures of Pluto's surface and of Pluto itself:

    An ice mountain range near Pluto's Sputnik Planum:
    nh-pluto-mountain-range.png

    Pluto gets sharper and sharper. On the right the previous image, left the newer sharper picture of Pluto:
    6a0105371bb32c970b01b7c7b2785e970b-pi

    Also, Pluto's moons Nix and (Marvel's :-P) Hydra are getting sharper and sharper:
    nh-nix-hydra-7-21.jpg


    Remember, so far we've only received around 5% of all the science data from New Horizons. At least for one year we'll get sharper and better pictures of the Pluto-Charon binary system.
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    More news about dwarf planets. This time about NASA's Dawn probe. It seems the crater around the mysterious white spots has created a mysterious haze. Possible an atmosphere of some kind, due to sublimation of water/ice. It's actually very big news:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/07/22/those-mysterious-spots-on-ceres-may-have-mysterious-haze-over-them-too/
  • Master_DaharkMaster_Dahark
    edited July 2015 Posts: 4,813
    Wouldn't it make a cool Sci-fi story if it was discovered that humanity actually began on Kepler-452B and some apocalyptic event occurred forcing us to move, and we've actually already been living on 'Earth2' this whole time?
    Maybe we're just now rediscovering the original!

    Sounds like a M.Night Shyamalan movie, lol ;)

    Awesome discovery in all seriousness
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,256
    Yeah it is pretty cool.

    @Master_Dahark, you know that can't be true. It says so in the Bible. Read the Good Book, sir; it explains where we come from.

    ;-)
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,256
    pluto.png
  • Gustav_GravesGustav_Graves
    Posts: 11,119
    Hold the presses! My dear @DarthDimi just linked me to this wonderful science article about ESA's Philae Lander that did research during its descent to and landing on comet 64P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko:

    http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/961/Wetenschap/article/detail/2408455/2015/07/30/Philae-vindt-bouwstenen-van-leven-op-komeet.dhtml

    Here is an English version of the article:

    http://news.yahoo.com/philae-lander-shows-theres-more-comets-soft-dust-180523628.html
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