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Space: The Final Frontier

Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
NASA at work in 1994 - Aeroacoustic propulsion laboratory and nozzle aeroacoustic test rig.

2asIem3.jpg
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
So basically we have the beginning of what could develop into a flawless imaging of the universe using spacetime itself as the messenger?
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/
Visions of the Future

Imagination is our window into the future. At NASA/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future.
Click to expand...
More images in the link.

9U8ZU9u.jpg


2oqNVT3.jpg


UAyxmEX.jpg
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
gw24W1X.jpg

The sleeping giant NGC 4889

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1602/
The placid appearance of NGC 4889 can fool the unsuspecting observer. But the elliptical galaxy, pictured in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, harbours a dark secret. At its heart lurks one of the most massive black holes ever discovered.

Located about 300 million light-years away in the Coma Cluster, the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4889, the brightest and largest galaxy in this image, is home to a record-breaking supermassive black hole. Twenty-one billion times the mass of the Sun, this black hole has an event horizon — the surface at which even light cannot escape its gravitational grasp — with a diameter of approximately 130 billion kilometres. This is about 15 times the diameter of Neptune’s orbit from the Sun. By comparison, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is believed to have a mass about four million times that of the Sun and an event horizon just one fifth the orbit of Mercury.

...
Click to expand...
More in the link.
 
F

facepalm007

Member
By pushing NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. GN-z11 is located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major.
Click to expand...

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-team-breaks-cosmic-distance-record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQdQx3V1HY

image2i1607bw.jpg


Man I can't even imagine what stuff people will be able to find with the James Webb.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
r9YMa9f.jpg

This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. The black region in the center represents the black hole’s event horizon, where no light can escape the massive object’s gravitational grip. The black hole’s powerful gravity distorts space around it like a funhouse mirror. Light from background stars is stretched and smeared as the stars skim by the black hole.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)
Click to expand...

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/behemoth-black-hole-found-in-an-unlikely-place
Behemoth Black Hole Found in an Unlikely Place

Astronomers have uncovered a near-record breaking supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in an unlikely place: in the center of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe. The observations, made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, may indicate that these monster objects may be more common than once thought.

Until now, the biggest supermassive black holes – those roughly 10 billion times the mass of our sun – have been found at the cores of very large galaxies in regions of the universe packed with other large galaxies. In fact, the current record holder tips the scale at 21 billion suns and resides in the crowded Coma galaxy cluster that consists of over 1,000 galaxies.

“The newly discovered supersized black hole resides in the center of a massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 1600, located in a cosmic backwater, a small grouping of 20 or so galaxies,” said lead discoverer Chung-Pei Ma, a University of California-Berkeley astronomer and head of the MASSIVE Survey, a study of the most massive galaxies and supermassive black holes in the local universe. While finding a gigantic black hole in a massive galaxy in a crowded area of the universe is to be expected – like running across a skyscraper in Manhattan – it seemed less likely they could be found in the universe’s small towns.

“There are quite a few galaxies the size of NGC 1600 that reside in average-size galaxy groups,” Ma said. “We estimate that these smaller groups are about 50 times more abundant than spectacular galaxy clusters like the Coma cluster. So the question now is, ‘Is this the tip of an iceberg?’ Maybe there are more monster black holes out there that don’t live in a skyscraper in Manhattan, but in a tall building somewhere in the Midwestern plains.”

The researchers also were surprised to discover that the black hole is 10 times more massive than they had predicted for a galaxy of this mass. Based on previous Hubble surveys of black holes, astronomers had developed a correlation between a black hole’s mass and the mass of its host galaxy’s central bulge of stars – the larger the galaxy bulge, the proportionally more massive the black hole. But for galaxy NGC 1600, the giant black hole’s mass far overshadows the mass of its relatively sparse bulge. “It appears that that relation does not work very well with extremely massive black holes; they are a larger fraction of the host galaxy’s mass,” Ma said.
Click to expand...
More in the link.
 
Insane Metal

Insane Metal

Member
Since I can't post new threads, some very good news regarding space exploration:

House tells NASA to stop messing around, start planning two Europa missions

Congress has been more interested in planetary science, however. And in particular, the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over NASA's budget, John Culberson (R-Texas), has fancied Europa. Even when NASA wasn't asking for Europa funds, the congressman was funneling money to the scientists at the California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Between the 2013 and 2016 fiscal years, NASA requested just $45 million in Europa funding, but Congress appropriated $395 million. For fiscal year 2017, NASA requested $49.6 million in Europa funding, but a House appropriations bill released this week by Culberson's committee proposes $260 million for mission planning and development.
Click to expand...

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016...illion-for-two-life-tracking-europa-missions/

And this:

House bill offers $19.5 billion for NASA in 2017

WASHINGTON — A House appropriations bill released May 17 would provide NASA with $19.5 billion in 2017, with significant increases in funding for the agency’s Orion and Space Launch System programs and a planned mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa.

The bill, released by the House Appropriations Committee in advance of a May 18 markup session by its Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) subcommittee, provides NASA with nearly half a billion dollars more than the agency’s request, which included a mix of discretionary and mandatory funds, and nearly $200 million above a bill approved by Senate appropriators last month.

The bill calls for spending $2 billion for the SLS program and $1.35 billion for Orion. Those levels are well above NASA’s request of $1.31 billion for SLS and $1.12 billion for Orion, although the Senate’s bill provides even more — $2.15 billion — for SLS.

The House bill also specified that, of the $5.6 billion allocated for NASA’s science programs, $260 million go towards a mission to Europa. NASA requested less than $50 million for the Europa mission, while the Senate’s bill did not specify an amount for that proposed mission.

- See more at: http://spacenews.com/house-bill-offers-19-5-billion-for-nasa-in-2017/#sthash.xFZZ4ZFl.dpuf
Click to expand...



This is truly incredibly exciting news.

GO NASA!
 
H

HellBlazer

Member
Insane Metal said:
Since I can't post new threads, some very good news regarding space exploration:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016...illion-for-two-life-tracking-europa-missions/

And this:

This is truly incredibly exciting news.

GO NASA!
Click to expand...

Interesting. It's hard to have much faith in long-term NASA projects though, since they're so dependent on the whims of political will. Like, it's great that Congress is on board with Europa missions right now, but will that last until the mission's actually ready?

I also can't help but feel the billions poured into SLS/Orion are a huge waste of money and time. Private companies are already nearly at the point where they can take over the launch system part of the equation, NASA should put their resources into more ambitious goals than just getting to space.
 
Insane Metal

Insane Metal

Member
HellBlazer said:
Interesting. It's hard to have much faith in long-term NASA projects though, since they're so dependent on the whims of political will. Like, it's great that Congress is on board with Europa missions right now, but will that last until the mission's actually ready?

I also can't help but feel the billions poured into SLS/Orion are a huge waste of money and time. Private companies are already nearly at the point where they can take over the launch system part of the equation, NASA should put their resources into more ambitious goals than just getting to space.
Click to expand...

Private companies are basically developing resources for near-earth exploration, no? NASA is looking for Deep Space exploration, which is quite a bit more complex and difficult. And expensive.
 
H

HellBlazer

Member
Insane Metal said:
Private companies are basically developing resources for near-earth exploration, no? NASA is looking for Deep Space exploration, which is quite a bit more complex and difficult. And expensive.
Click to expand...

Not really. ULA's Atlas V can launch spacecrafts to pretty much anywhere in the Solar System already. It launched New Horizons towards Pluto so... pretty far from Earth. :) I think SpaceX's Falcon Heavy (test flight planned for late this year) will have similar capabilities - it can at the very least get cargo and people to Mars since that's Elon Musk's main interest.

NASA mainly wanted a replacement for the Space Shuttle, to be able to send astronauts to space without depending on Russia or whoever. That's how the Constellation program started, which evolved into SLS/Orion. That's all well and good, but that won't be ready to send anyone up before 2021 at the very earliest. SpaceX plans to fly its first astronauts to the ISS aboard the crew-rated Dragon spacecraft next year. ULA is also developing its own crew vehicle for Atlas V and plans at least some tests (uncrewed I think) next year as well. So yeah, I'm not sure what NASA gains by developing their own solution when others will be ready way earlier, and probably way cheaper due to the nature of private industry. :\
 
F

Fine Ham Abounds

Member
3phemeral said:
I'm not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly: Are those tiny objects being affected by Jupiter's gravity and thus, keeping them in perpetual orbit between itself and us?
Click to expand...

This is an animation of the Trojans that are captured at Jupiter's stable Lagrange Points L4 and L5, and the Hildas, which are in such an orbital resonance with Jupiter that they fall into a roughly triangular regular orbit. This animation leaves out the actual asteroid belt which lies more or less just outside Mars orbit.

Here's a full view stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia

aGVYaTU.png
Click to expand...
 
3

3phemeral

Member
Fine Ham Abounds said:
This is an animation of the Trojans that are captured at Jupiter's stable Lagrange Points L4 and L5, and the Hildas, which are in such an orbital resonance with Jupiter that they fall into a roughly triangular regular orbit. This animation leaves out the actual asteroid belt which lies more or less just outside Mars orbit.

Here's a full view stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia
Click to expand...

Ah, thank you for this. I will have to read into this a bit more.
 
T

Teknoman

Member
Quick questions about telescopes:

Would a Celestron TravelScope 60 be pretty good for beginner/casual use? Not really looking to break the bank so to speak,but also not sure on beginner quality telescopes.
 
F

fallout

Member
Teknoman said:
Quick questions about telescopes:

Would a Celestron TravelScope 60 be pretty good for beginner/casual use? Not really looking to break the bank so to speak,but also not sure on beginner quality telescopes.
Click to expand...
I'm not really a fan. The lens is quite small and if you're lucky, they've cheaped out on everything but the optics. For a similar price, you can get a nice pair of astronomical binoculars:

http://www.celestron.com/browse-shop/astronomy/astronomy-binoculars/skymaster-15x70-binocular

After that, my usual recommendation is an 8-inch Dobsonian:

http://www.telescope.com/Orion-SkyQuest-XT8-Classic-Dobsonian-Telescope/p/102005.uts

If you'd like to know more, feel free to ask.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/studies-find-echoes-of-black-holes-eating-stars
Studies Find Echoes of Black Holes Eating Stars

sTaGWBM.jpg

This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star as it is being devoured by a supermassive black hole in a tidal disruption flare.

Supermassive black holes, with their immense gravitational pull, are notoriously good at clearing out their immediate surroundings by eating nearby objects. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole, the stellar material gets stretched and compressed -- or "spaghettified" -- as the black hole swallows it.

A black hole destroying a star, an event astronomers call "stellar tidal disruption," releases an enormous amount of energy, brightening the surroundings in an event called a flare. In recent years, a few dozen such flares have been discovered, but they are not well understood.

Astronomers now have new insights into tidal disruption flares, thanks to data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Two new studies characterize tidal disruption flares by studying how surrounding dust absorbs and re-emits their light, like echoes. This approach allowed scientists to measure the energy of flares from stellar tidal disruption events more precisely than ever before.

"This is the first time we have clearly seen the infrared light echoes from multiple tidal disruption events," said Sjoert van Velzen, postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and lead author of a study finding three such events, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. A fourth potential light echo based on WISE data has been reported by an independent study led by Ning Jiang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Science and Technology of China.

...
Click to expand...
More in the link.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
https://richarddawkins.net/2016/11/...-black-holes-will-crush-your-poor-tiny-brain/
This video about the scale of black holes will crush your poor, tiny brain

Black holes are vast, matter-annihilating objects that seem to defy physics by their very existence. They’re so weird, that when Albert Einstein’s equations first predicted the existence of these beasts, he didn’t believe they could actually be real.

And you can’t really blame him, because the idea that we have these singularities of space-time intent on sucking up all the matter around them scattered all around our cosmic backyard is pretty hard to wrap your head around.

But as people who write about black holes a lot, we figured we were past being shocked by how strange and massive they are.
Click to expand...

Here's the video:
https://youtu.be/QgNDao7m41M
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
eGOUfxm.jpg

This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. The black region in the center represents the black hole’s event horizon, where no light can escape the massive object’s gravitational grip. The black hole’s powerful gravity distorts space around it like a funhouse mirror. Light from background stars is stretched and smeared as the stars skim by the black hole.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)
Click to expand...

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/behemoth-black-hole-found-in-an-unlikely-place
Behemoth Black Hole Found in an Unlikely Place

Astronomers have uncovered a near-record breaking supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in an unlikely place: in the center of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe. The observations, made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, may indicate that these monster objects may be more common than once thought.

Until now, the biggest supermassive black holes – those roughly 10 billion times the mass of our sun – have been found at the cores of very large galaxies in regions of the universe packed with other large galaxies. In fact, the current record holder tips the scale at 21 billion suns and resides in the crowded Coma galaxy cluster that consists of over 1,000 galaxies.

...

The researchers also were surprised to discover that the black hole is 10 times more massive than they had predicted for a galaxy of this mass. Based on previous Hubble surveys of black holes, astronomers had developed a correlation between a black hole’s mass and the mass of its host galaxy’s central bulge of stars – the larger the galaxy bulge, the proportionally more massive the black hole. But for galaxy NGC 1600, the giant black hole’s mass far overshadows the mass of its relatively sparse bulge. “It appears that that relation does not work very well with extremely massive black holes; they are a larger fraction of the host galaxy’s mass,” Ma said.
Click to expand...
More in the link.
 
M

maquiladora

Member
NASA to Hold Media Call for Discovery Program Announcement

NASA will discuss the results of its latest Discovery mission selection during a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Jan. 4.

The briefing participants are:

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington
Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division in Washington
Principal investigator(s) of the selected mission(s)

To participate in the telecon, media should email their name and affiliation to Dwayne Brown at dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov or call 202-358-1726 by 3 p.m. Jan. 4.

Members of the public also may submit questions to be answered during and immediately following the briefing using #AskNASA.

The Discovery Program was founded in 1992 as an innovative way for NASA to explore space, calling on scientists and engineers to design missions that unlock the mysteries of the solar system. These cost-capped missions are led by a principal investigator and managed for NASA’s Planetary Science Division by the Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The 12 previously-selected Discovery missions include MESSENGER at Mercury, the Dawn mission to the large asteroids Vesta and Ceres, and the InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch in May 2018.

Read more about NASA’s Discovery Program and missions at:

https://discovery.nasa.gov
 
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