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Space: The Final Frontier

H

HotByCold

Banned
andromeda.jpg

I wanna go here.
 
A

AndersTheSwede

Member
So Atlantis launched today, and, in remembrance, Columbia disintegrated this month in 2003 (a generally bad year for America).

Many of you have probably seen pictures of Columbia's crew in uniform and what-not, but those shots tend to give you an idea of the badge, not of the personalities involved behind the names. So here's a photo I recently found of the Columbia crew during their wilderness training, to give you more of an idea of what they where like as persons.

h_sts107_training_02.jpg


Bless those willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to advance the boundaries of the human race.
 
T

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Is the guy in the back right Tim Meadows?
 
W

Windu

never heard about the cat, apparently
Old stuff from a article (2002), but still very cool.

The first photo from Mars' surface.
29xun9g.jpg

Missions to planets tend to cause sea changes in thinking. This is especially true the first time you actually touch down. The first spacecraft to land on Mars was Viking 1, on July 20, 1976. The first picture revealed a landscape strewn with rocks.
The search for life beyond Earth had begun in earnest, and the baton of space exploration had been firmly handed off from humans to robots. Much of what's known about Mars today was learned from the Viking missions or from other investigations that built on Viking findings.
Click to expand...
The Big Picture
zkrbx3.jpg

The Hubble Space Telescope was not the first spacecraft to bring Mars into sharp focus, but it did capture one of the best full-globe shots. This image was made during a 1995 opposition, when Mars relatively close to Earth for the same reason it will be close in August 2003.

This photo showed up last year on our list of Top 10 Space Science Photos of all time. Here's what Ray Villard, director for the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the telescope, said about it then:

"Looking at pictures of our Red Planet neighbor never grows tiring. The swirling atmosphere is always changing, kicking up dust storms and fleecy white clouds as the planet whirls like a toy top."

While the lack of Martian neighbors has so far been disappointing, the magic of the Red Planet has not died upon close inspection.
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Happy Times
2zgss3p.jpg

The Viking missions put landers on the planet. But they also mapped Mars from above. One view, of the Argyre basin, stands out in the mind of Bruce Jakosky, an expert on Mars geology from the University of Colorado.

"The perspective, combined with the spectacular impact crater that sits on the rim of Argyre, makes for an incredibly dramatic image," Jakosky said. "I always liked the image, but then somebody ruined it for me by pointing out that this dramatic crater was a perfect reproduction of a Happy Face!"
Click to expand...
The Other Face
opqx45.jpg

Serious Mars scientists scoff at the idea that the thing in the picture above is a construct of some intelligent civilization. But countless people are utterly convinced that it is, and they accuse NASA of a cover-up. Regardless of how you view the photo, it is big.

Ironically, it was space agency scientists who first suggested the feature had human qualities. Ever since, the face has taken on a life of its own.

Its mere mention in this list will generate e-mails from the believers, some of whom will, not for the first time, implicate SPACE.com in the whole conspiracy. Some will be offended that we've called them believers. Just look at the facts, they'll say.

That's what scientists say, too. And some more facts were provided recently by NASA's Odyssey spacecraft, again showing -- according to the scientists involved in the mission -- that the face is faceless.
Click to expand...
Live, From Mars!
aw84rn.jpg

During the 1980s and 1990s, space exploration lost some luster for the public. We had stepped on the Moon. Many times. Spacecraft had gone to Mars. Shuttle flights became routine.

On July 4, 1997, Mars Pathfinder and its plucky little Sojourner rover became the first crafts to land on Mars since the Viking era. They beamed home image after image. Most of those pictures would never have been seen by the public were it not for the burgeoning Internet. Millions of people followed the mission's progress online.

Pathfinder took us along, gave us a virtual tour of the Red Planet in real time. As Jakosky puts it: "What better way to show the excitement of exploration and of seeing a new place for the first time.
Click to expand...
3-D Views
2zyv04l.jpg


2m77rsx.jpg

Not all Mars imagery involves photographs, of course. In fact, scientists use other data to create images that fuel much of the best science going.

In the case of this image, data from missions separated by decades were put together to generate the first 3-D view of the north polar region of Mars.

"This is an image of the north pole that we constructed early in the Mars Global Surveyor mission from MOLA [Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter ] laser shots and color from Viking mosaics," explained Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It is relatively low resolution but it represented the first three-dimensional perspective of the polar regions of Mars and it has always been one of my favorites."

Ours, too.

The bonus image at right (we just could not stick with 10) is a favorite of David E. Smith, the principal investigator for MOLA at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. MOLA data was used to show this 930-mile (1,500-kilometer) stretch of the complex Valles Marineris canyon.

Red shows high areas. Blue regions are the lowest. The canyon has a depth of about 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) on the left and more than 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) at the right side of the image, Smith said. It varies in width from about 62 to 124 miles (100 to 200 kilometers).

Scientists have used MOLA data to get a more accurate view of the planet's surface structure and to figure out where water might once have ponded and where it would have flowed. Artists have used MOLA data to generate computer-reality images of Mars today and in the past, when there might have been surface water.
Click to expand...
Night Vision
2hntnup.jpg

One of the most coveted discoveries on Mars, if it ever occurs, will be liquid water. NASA's Odyssey spacecraft came close with the recent finding of water ice under the surface. Odyssey benefits from what was learned by every spacecraft before it, and it succeeded by being a marvel of technological diversity.

Odyssey probably won't be remembered for its Martian photographs, however. Scenes from other orbiting spacecraft have already shown us the entire planet. But Odyssey is giving dramatic (if unconventional) views, including some taken with an infrared camera that will lead to an infrared map of Mars.

This infrared image is among the favorites of Philip Christensen, an Arizona State University geologist in charge of Odyssey's cameras. It shows the entire spring/summer south polar cap.

"Because the image is an infrared image -- the first ever taken of the polar regions of Mars -- one can see details on the night side as well," he said. "The purple colors in the lower right of the image are actually in the dark."

The possibility of liquid water, and maybe even life on Mars, await further investigation that may well be beyond Odyssey's reach.
Click to expand...
Parting Shot
2eb8z0p.jpg

Mars has not yet coughed up all its secrets. Meanwhile, public interest in Mars and support for the billions of dollars it takes to explore the planet requires refreshment now and then. Many enthusiasts believe that a human mission is the next logical step. Scientists say it's the only way we'll answer the most pressing questions.

The trip will be dangerous.

Even getting good pictures of Mars is expensive and risky. Not every mission makes it -- only about half, history shows.

This final photo is one of the very few images of Mars taken by the Mars Observer, which was lost three days before it was to arrive at the planet in 1993. This shot, Observer's last, was taken about a month before the disaster and was used to calibrate instruments on the spacecraft. The target planet seems to emerge from the darkness in a photo that is haunting in more ways than one.

While the picture is not remarkable in any traditional sense, it stands as an important reminder that while technology has brought us closer to Mars, the planet is still not an easy target. This very challenge allows Mars to retain puzzles, fueling the human desire to go all the more.
Click to expand...
 
M

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
I woke up and spent the past few hours reading this thread and at least some of the links provided.

Thanks all, for the amazing ride. I hope it isn't over yet. :)
 
F

fallout

Member
Way back in this thread I mentioned gravitational lensing. As it happens, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a perfect example of it (click for bigger)!



Explanation: Gravity can bend light, allowing huge clusters of galaxies to act as telescopes. Almost all of the bright objects in this Hubble Space Telescope image are galaxies in the cluster known as Abell 2218. The cluster is so massive and so compact that its gravity bends and focuses the light from galaxies that lie behind it. As a result, multiple images of these background galaxies are distorted into long faint arcs -- a simple lensing effect analogous to viewing distant street lamps through a glass of wine. The cluster of galaxies Abell 2218 is itself about three billion light-years away in the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). The power of this massive cluster telescope has allowed astronomers to detect a galaxy at redshift 5.58, the most distant galaxy yet measured. This young, still-maturing galaxy is faintly visible to the lower right of the cluster core.
Click to expand...
 
L

Lord Helmet

Member
Just finished the first couple of pages... have to come back to this thread... I can't wait to see what the next 20 years brings in our lifetimes.
 
A

AndersTheSwede

Member
New Spitzer image of stars being born:

PIA10181-browse.jpg


Rho Oph is made up of a large main cloud of molecular hydrogen, a key molecule allowing new stars to form out of cold cosmic gas, with two long streamers trailing off in different directions. Recent studies using the latest X-ray and infrared observations reveal more than 300 young stellar objects within the large central cloud. Their median age is only 300,000 years, very young compared to some of the universe's oldest stars, which are more than 12 billion years old.
Click to expand...

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-023
 
F

fallout

Member
Stellar nurseries are so fucking cool. I just find it so beautiful that (in general) stars explode, creating nebula, which then create more stars. It's incredible!
 
A

AndersTheSwede

Member
fallout said:
Stellar nurseries are so fucking cool. I just find it so beautiful that (in general) stars explode, creating nebula, which then create more stars. It's incredible!
Click to expand...

And those first stars when they exploded seeded the rest of the galaxy with heavy elements allowing rocky planets to form around new stars.

Every molecule in your body was first "prototyped" and made in the heart of an ancient star.
 
dark_chris

dark_chris

Member
Subarushian said:
And those first stars when they exploded seeded the rest of the galaxy with heavy elements allowing rocky planets to form around new stars.

Every molecule in your body was first "prototyped" and made in the heart of an ancient star.
Click to expand...

Brain explodes.
 
W

Wowhawk

Banned
Space: The Final Frontier?

haha, it's more like...

Space: The Male Fronier!

If you’re anything like me, you have never asked yourself why a woman has never been to the moon because the answer is obvious.

Actually, the answer may surprise you.

The male instinct is a good one — it’s solid when the chips are down, and in this case it tells us men that women have never been to the moon because the moon is chalk full of science — like a robot, the natural enemy of womankind (both technology and robots). This is absolutely true, however, only true in the way that there are no unicorns underwater. Yes, unicorns cannot breathe water, but they also do not fucking exist. So what are we talking about here.

The real reason that women have never been to the moon has very little to do with their astounding ability to turn even the simplest of technologies into a catastrophic fucking unsolvable mystery on par with Stonehenge.

Remember the last time you were making some hot-hot jokes around a woman or womans, or the last time you were enjoying a cinematographic masterpiece like Die Hard 3, Payback, or The South Park Movie — or any other time that you were trying to mind your own fucking business?

Well what happened?

That’s right, said woman or womans ruined it with a torrent of shitty comments and/or nay saying. Perhaps something like, “Nicolas Cage thinks he’s so great” (in a sarcastic tone though. Nicholas Cage only thinks he’s so great because he’s fucking awesome), or maybe a “those are fake”, “you only think you’re funny”, or a “cigarettes cause cancer”.

Cigarettes cause cancer? No shit, I didn’t know that. Guess what talking any more during Face Off causes?

Can you imagine this manner of hijink aboard the USS Space Ship to the moon?

That’s why women will never go to the moon, because of their piss-poor, wet-blanket attitudes.
 
F

fallout

Member
... what? Why are you shitting up this wonderful thread.

dark_chris said:
Brain explodes.
Click to expand...
Yep. And all the heavy elements that you see around you most likely came from a nearby supernova billions of years ago. Of course, everything you see around you (and more) was once an infinitesimally small point ... kind of depends on which perspective you wish to take (or, I guess, how far back you wish to go).
 
A

Alien Bob

taken advantage of my ass
fallout said:
... what? Why are you shitting up this wonderful thread.
Click to expand...


Just saw another one of his posts in another thread (the aboriginal one)... don't expect him to last very long.
 
F

fallout

Member
I thought this was neat (click for higher res ... even higher res at link below):



This long-exposure photograph taken on January 3, 2001, shows nearly two dozen space satellites hovering over Kitt Peak, AZ, southwest of Tucson. Nineteen commercial communications satellites in the image have been clearly identified using location data on the Internet. The reddish Orion Nebula and the bright star Rigel, among others, are visible as bright streaks due to the rotation of Earth during the exposure. Amateur photographer Bill Livingston, a staff scientist with the National Science Foundation's National Solar Observatory near Tucson, took the image using basic camera equipment.
Click to expand...
Basically, you've got a bunch of geostationary satellites, which are the points and all the streaks are stars and other stuff that moves relative to the rotation of the earth.

Source: http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr01/0106images.html

Further reading: http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr01/pr0106.html
 
A

AndersTheSwede

Member
PIA08391_Epimetheus%2C_Rings_and_Titan.jpg


Titan. Shown here with Saturn's rings in the forground and small inner-satellite Epimetheus hanging above.

The only moon in our solar system to have an atmosphere, and the only planetoid to have an atmosphere with enough surface pressure to allow humans to walk around without pressure suits with an atmospheric pressure of 1.5 Earth's. (Venus also has a large atmosphere but it is 95 times the surface pressure of Earth, which would be... uncomfortable.) The atmosphere is 90%+ Nitrogen, analogous to Earth's early atmosphere before it was transformed by biological life.

Titan is also the only known body to have surface liquids with seas as large as the Caspian Sea on Earth, but its not liquid water (the surface temperature is -175 C) the liquids are Methane and Ethane. Basically think of lakes of natural gas in liquid form.

Fun fact: The atmosphere is so dense, and the gravity so low on Titan that humans could fly if they attached wings to their arms.

Hell I think it'd be worth the billion-dollar trip just for that.

Edit:

Karakand said:
Have a higher res version of that Europa pic, Arthas?

Also bless this thread.
Click to expand...

Much, much, much belatedly I managed to find a high-res image of that shot. But it's not Europa (surprise!) Its another moon of Saturn: Enceladus which has eerily similar features. You can tell them apart by those blue stripes on the southern hemisphere of Enceldaus which Europa doesn't have.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/EN011_Color_mosaic.jpg
 
A

AndersTheSwede

Member
Think this thread is going to die? Think again.

Atlantis undocked from the ISS yesterday and sent this image of the station as it backed away. Europe's newly installed Columbus laboratory is that slightly blueish module sticking out to the right on top.

STS-122_ISS_Flyaround.jpg
 
W

Windu

never heard about the cat, apparently
fkd0mc.jpg

STS-122 pilot Alan Poindexter and commander Steve Frick look out of the starboard window (pilot's side) of space shuttle Atlantis while it was docked to the International Space Station.

The two watched as fellow crewmates Rex Walheim and Stan Love perform the third and last spacewalk of the mission.
Click to expand...
 
F

fallout

Member
APOD revives the thread again! Interacting galaxies are just so fucking cool. There are a bunch of galaxy interaction programs out there that you can use to simulate galaxy collisions. It's sort of relaxing to play around with them ... in a weird sort of way.



Explanation: These two mighty galaxies are pulling each other apart. Known as " The Mice" because they have such long tails, each spiral galaxy has likely already passed through the other. They will probably collide again and again until they coalesce. The long tails are created by the relative difference between gravitational pulls on the near and far parts of each galaxy. Because the distances are so large, the cosmic interaction takes place in slow motion -- over hundreds of millions of years. NGC 4676 lies about 300 million light-years away toward the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices) and are likely members of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies. The above picture was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys which is more sensitive and images a larger field than previous Hubble cameras. The camera's increased sensitivity has imaged, serendipitously, galaxies far in the distance scattered about the frame.
Click to expand...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080224.html
 
A

AndersTheSwede

Member
Teknoman said:
Yes! It has returned!



Thats just...wow. But why does the sun look so docile?
Click to expand...

Dunno. Some sort of crazy filter on there to make the shot possible.

Here is Atlantis (again, its also Atlantis in that sun picture) docked with good old Mir. I have no idea how this picture was taken, maybe some Soyuz on approach? Either way, its pretty sci-fi-ish.

Atlantis_Docked_to_Mir.jpg
 
A

AndersTheSwede

Member
Tideas said:
I think that's earth. the blackdot is the spacestation
Click to expand...

No its the sun (we have no spacecraft that could take that kind of perspective shot with the Earth at the moment, plus you can see sun spots in the corners, and its really fricken huge), its just whatever filter the photographer was using to reduce the brightness of the sun making it look placid.
 
F

fallout

Member
Tideas said:
why isn't there stars in the bg?
Click to expand...
It's actually really simple. They wanted to take pictures of the earth, other astronauts, the moon, but not the stars. Remember, the sun is actually shining on the earth and the moon in these pictures. Naturally, then, they're taking short exposures. Take a fast exposure of the night sky and tell me what happens.

Of course, even if they took pictures of the stars, which would be a rather silly waste of some expensive film, the conspiracy theorists would just be claiming that they had used the stars in a backdrop.

Teknoman said:
Thats just...wow. But why does the sun look so docile?
Click to expand...
Just a solar filter. Basically, as far as I know, it's just a mirror. There are different filters you can use, though, like Hα, which show the really cool features like prominences and stuff. We used the former in my first year astronomy class to study the rotational speed of the Sun (yes, it's spinning) by tracking the sunspots. In fact, you can see a sunspot way up on the top right there. Right now, the Sun is in its low period for sunspots (they work on an 11 year cycle), so that's why there aren't more.

Here's a shot of the Sun (shown in black and white for contrast; click for larger image) and you can see 4 sunspots:



For the real-time sun in a bunch of different filters, see: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/
 
A

AndersTheSwede

Member
JetSetHero said:
Holy fucking shit - are those real? Surely not!
Click to expand...

Yes, they're real. :lol Done by some dude in a cow pasture in France with a commercial telescope.

Image of the solar transit of the International Space Station (ISS) and Space Shuttle Atlantis (50 minutes after undocking from the ISS, before return to Earth), taken from the area of Mamers (Normandie, France) on september 17th 2006 at 13h 38min 50s UT.
Takahashi TOA-150 refractor (diameter 150mm, final focal 2300mm), Baader helioscope and Canon 5D. Exposure of 1/8000s at 50 ISO, extracted from a series of 14 images (3 images/s) started 2s before the predicted time.

Transit forecast (place, time...) calculated by www.calsky.com.
Transit duration: 0,6s. Transit band width on Earth: 7.4 km. ISS distance to observer: 550 km. Speed: 7.4km/s. ISS size: 73m. Distance between ISS and Atlantis: 200m
Click to expand...

vaches.jpg


---

Please tell me someone has that in HiRes?
Click to expand...

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/210789main_PIA10181-hires.tif
 
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