Outer space thread

[GoCubsGo]

Two supermoons in August mean double the stargazing fun

Tonight, super blue moon, about 7:44 pm. Cloudy here.


India, peacock.


The supermoon rises behind the ancient temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Athens, Greece, Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

More pics, it was hard to choose just two to post here.

The moon is freaking awesome!

[Vrede too]

The moon is freaking awesome!

Curse you, Idalia. We're even getting wind gusts up to . . . 30 mph!

[GoCubsGo]

The moon is freaking awesome!

Curse you, Idalia. We're even getting wind gusts up to . . . 30 mph!

[GoCubsGo]

The moon is freaking awesome!

Curse you, Idalia. We're even getting wind gusts up to . . . 30 mph!

Another gorgeous moon.

[Vrede too]

Curse you, Idalia. We're even getting wind gusts up to . . . 30 mph!

Another gorgeous moon.

Still cloudy here.

[O Really]

We missed the moon. Overcast.

[GoCubsGo]

Well you guys obviously live in inferior locations!

[Vrede too]

Well you guys obviously live in inferior locations!

It's my dream to move to a wealthy Chicago suburb.




Article

[Vrede too]

Across the Northern Hemisphere, now's the time to catch a new comet before it vanishes for 400 years


This image provided by Gianluca Masi shows the comet C/2023 P1 Nishimura and its tail seen from Manciano, Italy on Sept. 5, 2023. Stargazers across the Northern Hemisphere should catch a glimpse as soon as possible because it will be another 400 years before the wandering ice ball returns.

... The comet, which is kilometer-sized (1/2-mile), will sweep safely past Earth on Sept. 12, passing within 78 million miles (125 million kilometers).

Early risers should look toward the northeastern horizon about 1 1/2 hours before dawn — to be specific, less than 10 or so degrees above the horizon near the constellation Leo. The comet will brighten as it gets closer to the sun, but will drop lower in the sky, making it tricky to spot.

Although visible to the naked eye, the comet is extremely faint.

“So you really need a good pair of binoculars to pick it out and you also need to know where to look,” said said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies....

That's going to be tough to spot - getting away from city lights and from blocking trees and buildings.

[Vrede too]

...

Eclipse Map — October 14, 2023 ("Ring of Fire") Annular Solar Eclipse

Obscuration (new word to me) around 40-45% for GoCubsGo, neoplacebo, Whack9, banni and me.
Sometime Lefty gets about 55.25% Obscuration.
Partial begins around 11:45 am EDT
Maximum around 1:00 to 1:15 pm
Partial ends around 2:45 pm

billy.pilgrim
Obscuration 64.75%
Partial begins 10:39:09 am CDT
Maximum 12:11:58 pm
Partial ends 1:49:41 pm

Not sure where O Really is, but he could see the max at around 9:20 to 9:30 am PDT, depending.

NASA gearing up for historic mission to a new world made of metal

... The Psyche mission is set to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center at 10:16 a.m. Thursday.

Researchers will never be able to go inside earth and visit the core, but scientists think the Psyche asteroid has similar characteristics they can learn from....

Psyche sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Soon, scientists will see what it’s made of up close which has never been done before....

The meteorite scientists want to study will research is 2.5 billion miles away from earth, so the spacecraft won’t reach its final destination until 2029....

It's an asteroid, NOT a "meteorite".

A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon....

Anyhow, cool! It's on my 2029 calendar.

[O Really]

Not sure where O Really is, but he could see the max at around 9:20 to 9:30 am PDT, depending.

Well out of good fortune and not so much from intentional planning, we're in Bend, which is close to the center track. But - we're a couple hours ride down to Crater Lake which is supposed to be one of the best places to catch the eclipse. Great, eh? Naaa, not so much. Too cloudy and probably won't be visible at all. And likely to snow at that elevation. We'll look for it here, but without any expectation of seeing it. Ratz.

[Vrede too]

Well out of good fortune and not so much from intentional planning, we're in Bend, which is close to the center track. But - we're a couple hours ride down to Crater Lake which is supposed to be one of the best places to catch the eclipse. Great, eh? Naaa, not so much. Too cloudy and probably won't be visible at all. And likely to snow at that elevation. We'll look for it here, but without any expectation of seeing it. Ratz.

Elevation would no doubt help some if clear, but Bend's Obscuration 88.80% is very close to as good as it gets. Put on some coffee, grab the bagels and cross your fingers.

[O Really]

Well out of good fortune and not so much from intentional planning, we're in Bend, which is close to the center track. But - we're a couple hours ride down to Crater Lake which is supposed to be one of the best places to catch the eclipse. Great, eh? Naaa, not so much. Too cloudy and probably won't be visible at all. And likely to snow at that elevation. We'll look for it here, but without any expectation of seeing it. Ratz.

Elevation would no doubt help some if clear, but Bend's Obscuration 88.80% is very close to as good as it gets. Put on some coffee, grab the bagels and cross your fingers.

No eclipse show for us. It might have gotten a little less light for a while, but it's hard to tell if it was due to the eclipse or just cloud movement - of which there is much. Only ring of fire show we get is this one:

[GoCubsGo]

Supposed to have 50% coverage here.

Worst weather weekend in months, been raining since Thursday, 35 mph winds and 51°.

What sun?
What eclipse?

No swimming for the dog either and he doesn't know how to surf.

[Vrede too]

No eclipse show for us. It might have gotten a little less light for a while, but it's hard to tell if it was due to the eclipse or just cloud movement - of which there is much. Only ring of fire show we get is this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-zNQA5Xi4Q

Bummer. Clear here, but 40% dimming is hardly noticeable when it comes on gradually. I never found pinhole viewers to be very exciting.

[Vrede too]

Small Asteroid Is Earth's Constant Companion
June 15, 2016


Asteroid 2016 HO3 - Earth's Constant Companion

... "Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "... Our calculations indicate 2016 HO3 has been a stable quasi-satellite of Earth for almost a century, and it will continue to follow this pattern as Earth's companion for centuries to come."

... The asteroid's orbit also undergoes a slow, back-and-forth twist over multiple decades. "The asteroid's loops around Earth drift a little ahead or behind from year to year, but when they drift too far forward or backward, Earth's gravity is just strong enough to reverse the drift and hold onto the asteroid so that it never wanders farther away than about 100 times the distance of the moon," said Chodas. "The same effect also prevents the asteroid from approaching much closer than about 38 times the distance of the moon. In effect, this small asteroid is caught in a little dance with Earth."

Asteroid 2016 HO3 was first spotted on April 27, 2016, by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, operated by the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy and funded by NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The size of this object has not yet been firmly established, but it is likely larger than 120 feet (40 meters) and smaller than 300 feet (100 meters)....

A mysterious rock orbiting Earth appears to be a chunk of the moon that was blasted away by a meteorite
October 27, 2023

... A study in 2021, which analyzed the light bouncing off the rock, found it was made of components that were remarkably similar to the stuff that makes up the moon's surface....

An advanced computer simulation, taking into account the properties of the sun, the moon, the Earth, and all other planets in the solar system, found that some lucky moon rocks could survive being blasted away from the lunar surface, provided they follow very specific rules.

Being blasted from the moon at about 1.5 miles per second is one of these rules, lending credence to the idea that this satellite was created by the impact of a meteorite....

Be well, travel buddy.

[Vrede too]

Not even our galaxy :

A Supernova Blew Out Part of Earth's Atmosphere, Scientists Say

It sounds as though in October 2022, humanity may have gotten a little taste of a cosmic disaster of epic proportions.

A powerful supernova some 1.9 billion light-years away rocked the universe, sending out a massive burst of gamma rays that buffeted our humble planet.

At the time, astronomers dubbed the flareup the "BOAT," which stands for "brightest of all time" in a clear reference to iconic rap terminology. It was an exceedingly rare event, with scientists estimating such an event only occurs once in every 10,000 years.

Now, scientists have combed through the data and found that the gamma ray burst (GRB) was so powerful that it took a chunk out of the Earth's upper atmosphere, the New York Times reports.

"The ozone was partially depleted — was destroyed temporarily," Pietro Ubertini, an astronomer at the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome, coauthor of a new paper published in the journal Nature, told the newspaper.

Fortunately, the ozone layer, a layer of the Earth's stratosphere that shields it from harmful ultraviolet radiation, repaired itself in a matter of minutes, meaning that it was "nothing serious," per Ubertini.

But if the supernova that triggered the burst had been any closer, he said, "it would be a catastrophe." ...

Phew.

[Vrede too]

This has to be on the list of greatest things humanity has ever done:

Amazing images from James Webb telescope, two years after launch

[Vrede too]

Huge ring of galaxies challenges thinking on cosmos


An artist's impression highlighting the positions of the Big Ring (in blue) and Giant Arc (shown in red) in the sky.

Scientists at the University of Central Lancashire have discovered a gigantic, ring-shaped structure in space.

It is 1.3bn light-years in diameter and appears to be roughly 15 times the size of the Moon in the night sky as seen from Earth.

Named the Big Ring by the astronomers, it is made up of galaxies and galaxy clusters.

They say that it is so big it challenges our understanding of the universe....

Such large structures should not exist according to one of the guiding principles of astronomy, called the cosmological principle. This states that all matter is spread smoothly across the Universe....

The Big Ring was identified by Alexia Lopez, a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), who also discovered the Giant Arc - a structure spanning 3.3bn light-years of space.

Asked how it felt to have made the discoveries, she said: "It's really surreal. I do have to pinch myself, because I made these discoveries accidentally, they were serendipitous discoveries. But it is a big thing and I can't believe that I'm talking about it, I don't believe that it's me ...

Some people really really really win the genetic lottery.

[GoCubsGo]

Some people really really really win the genetic lottery.

She's just pretending to be smart.