The Astronomy Thread

Cynical said:

I'm more leaning towards the thinking we wouldn't have much effect here, if say a neutron star merger happened at that distance, but the science is still new, we have no clear idea what is going on in the local area, when one of these events occurs. Are they actually having an effect on physical matter, beyond the area of the event? Or are they just blips in "spacetime" rippling the fabric of the universe, us along with it, with no real physical effect on it, but sensitive equipment can pick up the effect?

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Neutron stars are very energetic and material objects. Two neutron stars merging produce a "kilonova", so-called because it's about 1000 times the effect of a normal nova. A supernova would be 10-100 times that, but it's still a very violent event if you're close.

But if something happened within Betelgeuse that was energetic enough to cause gravity waves, all bets are off regarding the size of the supernova it could produce. We might be looking at a hypernova instead... which would be bad at that distance.

RIP Spitzer telescope. Final commands/signal just sent/received moments ago.

khorum said:

These insane anti-Musk people are getting insufferable. Ecocuck lawyers are harping up a 2nd-year law student's paper to get astronomers to sue the FCC to stop SpaceX's starlink deployment:

SpaceX's license to launch hundreds of internet satellites may have violated the law, experts say. Astronomers could sue the FCC.

SpaceX is planning a mega-constellation of thousands of internet satellites called Starlink. But the FCC didn't perform an environmental review.

www.businessinsider.com

The two "law experts" are actually just lawyers for a couple environmentalist PACs that love to spam NEPA complaints to stop things like gas pipelines and offshore drilling by exploiting the utterly worthless 1970 NEPA law. The Law requires federal agencies to conduct environmental impact studies before going forward for major capital projects, but the law is clear about the categorical exemptions to the impact studies. Even after the EPA and other fed agencies complete their NEPA compliance reports, these fucks spam more nitpicky environmental impact complaints to permanently bog down critical energy and infrastructure programs for shit like saving some dumb minnow or someshit.

Now they're coming after SpaceX because some butthurt astronomer got her long-exposure shot ruined by the starlink launch.

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These "environmental groups" are pure scum. The same sorts of people are constantly suing agricultural people as well. The group is usually made up of about 5 people, 4 lawyers and a secretary, and they make their living trumping up lawsuits against whatever industry they can get money out of and taking donations from well-meaning people who care about the environment but are too lazy to do their homework. Fucking leeches.

MusicForFish said:

It was supposed to be in the second half of this year.

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At this point, NASA has asked for the same in-depth review of the way Boeing operate that they did on SpaceX. When you add the 737Max software woes to the two mission-critical bugs found, it paints a picture of systemic bad practices.

(you know it will be found that both dev and Q&A are subcontracted to the lowest bidder in India, right?)

Also, it has to be noted that all the "If only there had been people on board, it would have been a success" proclamations at the press conference after the test now resonate hollow: they already knew they had to patch the software in emergency before landing the craft, and that's possibly not something that would have happened (the full software review) if there had been manual intervention ("okay, gratz guys for your reflexes, we'll check that once you all land back").


So that's why the Congress committee absolutely wanted to smash that bill forcing NASA to spend a shitton of money through Boeing. They knew Boeing is one review away from being kicked out of the entire space program.