Cessnaflyer
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
How amazing would that be to be able to send many cells into space, have robots animate them and then upload all the knowledge needed for their brains and then have these beings carry out a mission!
7 Earth Size Exoplanets Orbiting TRAPPIST-1 Star
- Thread starter A Life Aloft
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A Life Aloft
Well-Known Member
Here are some actual photos:
Far beyond the local group of galaxies lies NGC 3621, some 22 million light-years away. Found in the multi-headed southern constellation Hydra, the winding spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe are loaded with luminous blue star clusters, pinkish starforming regions, and dark dust lanes. Still, for astronomers NGC 3621 has not been just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy. Some of its brighter stars have been used as standard candles to establish important estimates of extragalactic distances and the scale of the Universe. This beautiful image of NGC 3621, is a composite of space- and ground-based telescope data. It traces the loose spiral arms far from the galaxy's brighter central regions for some 100,000 light-years. Spiky foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy and even more distant background galaxies are scattered across the colorful skyscape.
Explanation: NGC 660 is featured in this cosmic snapshot. Over 40 million light-years away and swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, NGC 660's peculiar appearance marks it as a polar ring galaxy. A rare galaxy type, polar ring galaxies have a substantial population of stars, gas, and dust orbiting in rings strongly tilted from the plane of the galactic disk. The bizarre-looking configuration could have been caused by the chance capture of material from a passing galaxy by a disk galaxy, with the captured debris eventually strung out in a rotating ring. The violent gravitational interaction would account for the myriad pinkish star forming regions scattered along NGC 660's ring. The polar ring component can also be used to explore the shape of the galaxy's otherwise unseen dark matter halo by calculating the dark matter's gravitational influence on the rotation of the ring and disk. Broader than the disk, NGC 660's ring spans over 50,000 light-years.
Fast expanding gas clouds mark the end for a central star in the Calabash Nebula. The once-normal star has run out of nuclear fuel, causing the central regions to contract into a white dwarf. Some of the liberated energy causes the outer envelope of the star to expand. In this case, the result is a photogenic proto-planetary nebula. As the million-kilometer per hour gas rams into the surrounding interstellar gas, a supersonic shock front forms where ionized hydrogen and nitrogen glow blue. Thick gas and dust hide the dying central star. The Calabash Nebula, also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula and OH231.8+4.2, will likely develop into a full bipolar planetary nebula over the next 1000 years. The nebula, featured here, is about 1.4 light-years in extent and located about 5000 light-years away toward the constellation of Puppis.
A large snowball has just passed the Earth. Known as Comet 45P/Honda–Mrkos–Pajdušáková", or 45P for short, the comet came 10 times closer to Earth yesterday than the Earth ever gets to the Sun. During this passage, the comet was photographed sporting a thin ion tail and a faint but expansive green coma. The green color is caused mostly by energized molecules of carbon. Comet 45P became just bright enough to see with the unaided eye when it came closest to the Sun in December. Now, however, the comet is fading as it heads back out to near the orbit of Jupiter, where it spends most of its time. The kilometer-sized nucleus of ice and dirt will return to the inner Solar System in 2022.
Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula. Inside the nebula lies an open cluster of bright young stars designated NGC 2244. These stars formed about four million years ago from the nebular material and their stellar winds are clearing a hole in the nebula's center, insulated by a layer of dust and hot gas. Ultraviolet light from the hot cluster stars causes the surrounding nebula to glow. The Rosette Nebula spans about 100 light-years across, lies about 5000 light-years away, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).
A Life Aloft
Well-Known Member
Photos taken in December by New Horizon, I give you the icy plains of Pluto:
Pluto's Moon, the beautiful Charon:
Pluto's Moon, the beautiful Charon:
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A Life Aloft
Well-Known Member
From this month, Cassini which is currently studying/photographing and mapping Saturn, it's rings, and it's 18 moons:
Saturn:
The Titan moon
Saturn's rings
The Epimetheus moon
The Daphnis moon
The Enceladus moon
Saturn:
The Titan moon
Saturn's rings
The Epimetheus moon
The Daphnis moon
The Enceladus moon
Cessnaflyer
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Looks like modeling for a video game.From this month, Cassini which is currently studying/photographing and mapping Saturn, it's rings, and it's 18 moons:
Saturn:
The Titan moon
Saturn's rings
The Epimetheus moon
The Daphnis moon
The Enceladus moon
Beep
Well-Known Member
This sounds like it would be a good movie plot.... about man made space robots that return to destroy the humans.
A Life Aloft
Well-Known Member
I just get so excited thinking of some tiny machine out in space, so far away, taking photos and sending telemetry clear back here and all the wondrous things that we are learning and all the marvelous discoveries being made.........all the work, the designing, the engineering, the testing, the materials created, the thousands of employees, the construction of the various telescopes, rovers, landers, orbiters, satellites, and machines.........it's just amazingly mind boggling and so tremendously awesome. It gives me hope. W can create anything at some point. The men and women that invent, create and produce such technology and dedicate their lives to this endeavor, are astounding individuals. We are still pioneers.
Look at this.....just delivered and installed in the last few days at White Sands, the Propulsion Qualification Module which will contain the 21 engines for our Orion spacecraft.
Orion will travel 40,000 miles beyond our moon to test the spacecraft that will carry humans farther into the solar system than ever before!!! How can anyone not be thrilled over this? NASA will use the proving ground of space near the moon to establish the deep-space mission operations needed to for long-duration missions. These missions will incrementally decrease our reliance on the Earth for in-space operations and enable future missions on the journey to Mars.
Humans going to Mars is now a reality and not that far away.
Orion's crew module at the Kennedy Space Center
Look at this.....just delivered and installed in the last few days at White Sands, the Propulsion Qualification Module which will contain the 21 engines for our Orion spacecraft.
Orion will travel 40,000 miles beyond our moon to test the spacecraft that will carry humans farther into the solar system than ever before!!! How can anyone not be thrilled over this? NASA will use the proving ground of space near the moon to establish the deep-space mission operations needed to for long-duration missions. These missions will incrementally decrease our reliance on the Earth for in-space operations and enable future missions on the journey to Mars.
Humans going to Mars is now a reality and not that far away.
Orion's crew module at the Kennedy Space Center
A
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Cptnchia
Dissatisfied Customer
killbilly
Vocals, Lyrics, Triangle, Washboard, Kittens
Here's the wiki for the book I mentioned earlier. Seriously. This thing stretches the envelope if you've never read Stross. A few of you will love this book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando
trafficinsight
Well-Known Member
So sorry, we have to find newer and better and stealthier ways to kill each other.
Fully agree because I believe that grand ideas like getting to Mars has amazing downstream benefits for science.
But you know, we need to spend $20 billion to build a wall scary people are just going to continue to tunnel-under.
Richman
JC’s Resident Curmudgeon
Ain't that the truth.
The universe is completely indifferent to our survival on Earth.
We're kind of on our own. We are both saviors and nemeses to the human race.
