The Astronomy Thread

Pretty cool design/demonstration, not exactly reinventing the wheel. More like making a more awesome chainmail tire.

This is a poster map of over two thousand stellar systems with known planets. The map helps to visualize the relative distance and location of these systems with respect to Earth using a flattened polar projection (i.e. zero declination) and a logarithmic distance scale. Those systems with potentially habitable exoplanets are named and highlighted with a red circle. You will need to click and enlarge the image to see details.

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Won't embed, but its worth loading. A different perspective of what we've discovered so far.

Dropbox - exoplanets_stellar_map.png

Aaron said:

lol @ musk: "...if it doesn't blow up on ascent!"

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It's a fair possibility. They need failures to fix flaws though and as we know all to well, just because things work for awhile doesn't mean it doesn't have an issue.
It is good he is accepting that with a sense of humor though.

What a great time to be alive. Kerbal space program, human edition is just about to go hot.

Just watch.

Geminid meteor shower could be the year's best, scientists say

Haha, I didn't watch that vid all the way through. But it sounds like a good time to take a look.

It was fucking cloudy and fucking 17 degrees here. I did brave that shit until I saw 1 though. Anyone else pay attention to this?

Meteor showers always seem hit or miss. Only time I ever recall seeing a good one was when I was probably 12. Me and some friends were sledding at night (we made an ice ramp we wanted to get extra frozen so we waited until night to try it lol) and got tired and while looking up at the sky, we noticed some meteors. Maybe like 1 every couple minutes, if that. Def a blink and miss it type situation, though.

Dandain said:

It was fucking cloudy and fucking 17 degrees here. I did brave that shit until I saw 1 though. Anyone else pay attention to this?

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Saw about five in fifteen minutes at 2am. They flash by really quick so it's easy to miss.

The big problem is each president has their own grand idea and promptly guts the previous grand idea unless it is so far along that cutting funding makes no sense (and even that isnt a guarantee).

It's like middle management at a company where each manager/director has their own pet project, everyone pours money/time into it, then it gets tossed when that manager/director moves on and another one wants to make their mark.

Ukerric said:

I was talking in the Politics thread about being doubtful on Making Space Great Again noises from the White House. Great idea, and then the Congress never funds it...

Turns out that the aerospace industry is pessimistic as well: Ominous signs for defense, aerospace industries as Congress scrambles to fund government - SpaceNews.com

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LMAO the AIA is a fucking industry lobbyist group. They represent the exact same bloated military-industrial firms that have been bellyaching about Trump’s skepticism about their antics that culminated with Trump ordering an inspector general audit of their meal ticket. They whined more or less along the same lines when Trump threatened to cancel future F35 orders in lieu of cheaper superhornets and when he demanded a renegotiated price for future orders of the next Airforce One.

They specifically lobby for Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed and all their member companies that comprise the ULA—the one firm that has been impacted the most by SpaceX’s disruption of the orbital launch vehicle space.

Incidentally, neither SpaceX nor Bezos’ Blue Origin accepted membership into the AIA.