• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Astronomical News

Ronnie Jersey said:
Is there an end to the universe?
Or does it just stretch on forever?
Click to expand...
I like John Dobson’s theory: Redshift suggests it recycles.

The thought that it is not in some way contained breaks my head. This galaxy is awful big on its own. I observe our neighbouring star systems regularly and wowee is it immense. And the galaxy is itself just a speck in the vastness. It’s so big, at times I feel quite seasick.
 
The edge of the observable universe is 46.5 billion light years way.
We can never know what is beyond that, unless we develop faster than light travel.

Observable_Universe_with_Measurements_01.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I read a theory called the “ big rip “ and not a person passing gas.

The universe is expanding at a tremendous rate, and when the universe is stretched to the limit it will rip.

And according to this theory, ripping means game over as everything in the universe will rip apart down to the atoms.
 
charliebrown said:
I read a theory called the “ big rip “ and not a person passing gas.

The universe is expanding at a tremendous rate, and when the universe is stretched to the limit it will rip.

And according to this theory, ripping means game over as everything in the universe will rip apart down to the atoms.
Click to expand...
Entropy wins ultimately!
 
According to The Astrophysical Journal, after 30 years of data, the Hubble Telescope discovered the true rate of universe expansion.

The old speed was 67.36 kilometers per sec per mega parsec.

It is actually 73 kilometers per sec per mega parsec which means you and I are moving at 168,000 miles per sec.

This leads to the “ great freeze “ theory.

The universe is expanding so fast, and so much energy is being released, our universe will turn into unbelievable cold and stop.
 

Killer Asteroids Are Hiding in Plain Sight. A New Tool Helps Spot Them.​


Ed Lu wants to save Earth from killer asteroids.

Or at least, if there is a big space rock streaking our way, Dr. Lu, a former NASA astronaut with a doctorate in applied physics, wants to find it before it hits us — hopefully with years of advance warning and a chance for humanity to deflect it.

On Tuesday, B612 Foundation, a nonprofit group that Dr. Lu helped found, announced the discovery of more than 100 asteroids. (The foundation’s name is a nod to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s children’s book, “The Little Prince”; B612 is the home asteroid of the main character.)

That by itself is unremarkable. New asteroids are reported all the time by skywatchers around the world. That includes amateurs with backyard telescopes and robotic surveys systematically scanning the night skies.

What is remarkable is that B612 did not build a new telescope or even make new observations with existing telescopes. Instead, researchers financed by B612 applied cutting-edge computational might to years-old images — 412,000 of them in the digital archives at the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, or NOIRLab — to sift asteroids out of the 68 billion dots of cosmic light captured in the images.

Typically, asteroids are discovered when the same part of the sky is photographed multiple times during the course of one night. A swath of the night sky contains a multitude of points of light. Distant stars and galaxies remain in the same arrangement. But objects that are much closer, within the solar system, move quickly, and their positions shift over the course of the night.

Astronomers call a series of observations of a single moving object during a single night a “tracklet.” A tracklet provides an indication of the object’s motion, pointing astronomers to where they might look for it on another night. They can also search older images for the same object.

...for Mr. Moeyens and Dr. Juric, a single point of light that is not a star or a galaxy is a starting point for their algorithm, which they named Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR.

The motion of an asteroid is precisely dictated by the law of gravity. THOR constructs a test orbit that corresponds to the observed point of light, assuming a certain distance and velocity. It then calculates where the asteroid would be on subsequent and previous nights. If a point of light show up there in the data, that could be the same asteroid. If the algorithm can link together five or six observations across a few weeks, that is a promising candidate for an asteroid discovery.

https://dnyuz.com/2022/05/31/killer-asteroids-are-hiding-in-plain-sight-a-new-tool-helps-spot-them/

maximus otter
 
skinny said:
I like John Dobson’s theory: Redshift suggests it recycles.

The thought that it is not in some way contained breaks my head. This galaxy is awful big on its own. I observe our neighbouring star systems regularly and wowee is it immense. And the galaxy is itself just a speck in the vastness. It’s so big, at times I feel quite seasick.
Click to expand...
I suspect we're just the dirt under someone's finger nail.
 
skinny said:
I like John Dobson’s theory: Redshift suggests it recycles.

The thought that it is not in some way contained breaks my head. This galaxy is awful big on its own. I observe our neighbouring star systems regularly and wowee is it immense. And the galaxy is itself just a speck in the vastness. It’s so big, at times I feel quite seasick.
Click to expand...
Yes, centring a star or planet in the centre of the field of view in a non tracking telescope and watching the Earth’s spin move it out of view can be quite nausea inducing.:willy:
 
The United States Geological Survey ( USGS ) studied the March 10, 1982, the nine planet alignment as the planets aligned on the same side of the sun.

The USGS concluded that this alignment did not affect anything, but a extremely remote possible effect on very shallow faults.

The USGS reminds people earthquakes happen all the time on a regular basis.
 
I've seen three or four alignments of this sort over my lifetime; the gravitational effects are negligible. Tidal effects from the Sun and Moon are far larger.

Having said that, Jupiter does have a significant effect on the Milankovitch cycles, which are a big factor in causing ice ages on Earth.
 
Last edited:
AlienP said:

Mystery issue experienced on NASA's Voyager 1 probe​

The Voyager 1 probe is still exploring interstellar space 45 years after launching, but it has encountered an issue that mystifies the spacecraft's team on Earth.
Voyager 1 continues to operate well, despite its advanced age and 14.5 billion-mile distance (23.3 billion kilometers) from Earth. And it can receive and execute commands sent from NASA, as well as gather and send back science data.
But the readouts from the attitude articulation and control system, which control the spacecraft's orientation in space, don't match up with what Voyager is actually doing. The attitude articulation and control system, or AACS, ensures that the probe's high-gain antenna remains pointed at Earth so Voyager can send data back to NASA ... ... So far, the Voyager team believes the AACS is still working, but the instrument's data readouts seem random or impossible.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/18/world/nasa-voyager-1-issue-scn/index.html
Click to expand...
It's just @rynner2, letting us know he's fine...
 
'Absolutely bizarre' spirals of blue light spotted in sky above New Zealand

The appearance of an extraordinary spiral of blue light in the sky above New Zealand has prompted amazement among stargazers - and theories ranging from aliens to black holes.

Astronomer Alasdair Burns, who runs star-gazing business Twinkle Dark Sky Tours, spotted the spectacle from the country's Stewart Island.

"It was absolutely bizarre," he [said]. "It was like a massive spiral. And it very, very slowly, serenely moving north across the night sky and then just sort of dissipating as it went."

skynews-spiral-light-new-zealand_5810421.jpg

The spiral of light spotted above New Zealand. Pic: Alasdair Burns/Twinkle Dark Sky Tours​

He told TV3: "At first sight it almost looked like a spiral galaxy just hanging there in the night sky."

Professor Richard Easther, from Auckland University, explained the likely cause of the extraordinary light show.

"As far as we can tell it's created by the sun catching the exhaust [fumes] from the second stage of a SpaceX rocket that reignited about an hour after it had been placed in orbit at Cape Canaveral," he [said].

"It's amazing, I wish I'd seen it."

While Elon Musk's SpaceX has yet to confirm it was behind the phenomenon, the company's third rocket flight in 36 hours - the Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Globalstar DM15 satellites - is widely thought to be responsible.

https://news.sky.com/story/absolute...ght-spotted-in-sky-above-new-zealand-12637367

maximus otter
 
Last edited by a moderator:
maximus otter said:
'Absolutely bizarre' spirals of blue light spotted in sky above New Zealand

The appearance of an extraordinary spiral of blue light in the sky above New Zealand has prompted amazement among stargazers - and theories ranging from aliens to black holes.

Astronomer Alasdair Burns, who runs star-gazing business Twinkle Dark Sky Tours, spotted the spectacle from the country's Stewart Island.

"It was absolutely bizarre," he [said]. "It was like a massive spiral. And it very, very slowly, serenely moving north across the night sky and then just sort of dissipating as it went."

View attachment 56339
The spiral of light spotted above New Zealand. Pic: Alasdair Burns/Twinkle Dark Sky Tours​

He told TV3: "At first sight it almost looked like a spiral galaxy just hanging there in the night sky."

Professor Richard Easther, from Auckland University, explained the likely cause of the extraordinary light show.

"As far as we can tell it's created by the sun catching the exhaust [fumes] from the second stage of a SpaceX rocket that reignited about an hour after it had been placed in orbit at Cape Canaveral," he [said].

"It's amazing, I wish I'd seen it."

While Elon Musk's SpaceX has yet to confirm it was behind the phenomenon, the company's third rocket flight in 36 hours - the Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Globalstar DM15 satellites - is widely thought to be responsible.

https://news.sky.com/story/absolute...ght-spotted-in-sky-above-new-zealand-12637367

maximus otter
Click to expand...
It's just an alien display. . . we used to know them as Catherine Wheels!
 
The Star That Survived A Supernova

When a team of astronomers went to look at the site of the peculiar thermonuclear supernova SN 2012Z with the Hubble Space Telescope, they were shocked to discover that the star had survived the explosion. Not only had it survived — the star was even brighter after the supernova than it had been before.

While they are vitally important to astronomy, the origins of thermonuclear supernovae are poorly understood. Astronomers agree that they are the destruction of white dwarf stars — stars roughly the mass of the sun packed into the size of the Earth. What causes the stars to explode is unknown. One theory posits that the white dwarf steals matter from a companion star. When the white dwarf gets too heavy, thermonuclear reactions ignite in the core and lead to a runaway explosion that destroys the star.

SN 2012Z was a strange type of thermonuclear explosion, sometimes called a Type Iax supernova. They are the dimmer, weaker cousins of the more traditional Type Ia. Because they are less powerful and slower explosions, some scientists have theorized that they are failed Type Ia supernovae. The new observations confirm this hypothesis.

“We were expecting to see one of two things when we got the most recent Hubble data,” McCully said. “Either the star would have completely gone away, or maybe it would have still been there, meaning the star we saw in the pre-explosion images wasn’t the one that blew up. Nobody was expecting to see a surviving star that was brighter. That was a real puzzle.”

McCully and the team think that the half-exploded star got brighter because it puffed up to a much bigger state. The supernova wasn’t strong enough to blow away all the material, so some of it fell back into what is called a bound remnant. Over time, they expect the star to slowly return to its initial state, only less massive and larger. Paradoxically, for white dwarf stars, the less mass they have, the larger they are in diameter.
Click to expand...
 
The light comes from objects an astonishing 13 billion years old, almost as old as the universe itself.

In the Vedas, it is stated that there is actually no such thing as time, future, past, only an eternal now.

Somehow there's truth in both of these facts.

I'm thinking of Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams as I look at this picture.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top