The Astronomy Thread

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Borzak

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Pretty sure Bezos space hop is all part of the plan of how he disappears, or his body double disappears.
 

BrutulTM

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It seems like congress wants them to succeed since they severely lost the bid for the moon contract to SpaceX but then congress just decided to give them $10B anyway.
 

Cybsled

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Not directly. The video points out they just authorized the 10B, not actually gave the 10B. They're basically forcing NASA to pick a 2nd lander and haven't actually given them the money yet.
 

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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1623856871777.png


Because it's such a showy star, and easily observable all over the planet — not to mention a popular movie based on the name, as well as the small fact that one day (though not any time soon) Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova and be way brighter than Venus in our sky — people took notice. Especially astronomers, of course, who came up with a lot of ideas for why the star faded so rapidly. Starspots, gas and dust clouds, a temperature drop, and other hypotheses were put forward with varying degrees of success, but a paper just published combines two of them to explain the weird behavior: The star ejected a cloud of gas, and then a temperature drop caused dust to condense in the cloud, blocking the star's surface from our view.​
This conclusion is based on a series of jaw-dropping images taken of Betelgeuse using the SPHERE and GRAVITY cameras hooked up to the monster 8.2-meter Very Large Telescope in Chile. These cameras can be used to produce images with phenomenal resolution, enough to actually see the shape of the star! Usually stars are too small and far way to resolve their surfaces, but Betelgeuse is both close (something like 530 light years away) and enormous (a billion kilometers across), making it possible to map its surface in detail.​
 
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BrotherWu

MAGA
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Hey guys. I want to get a starter telescope for looking at shit with the kids. I'm thinking it would be cool to get something that finds the shit for you.

Below is the one I am looking at. Anyone with experience with this family? I don't know what to look for and what to avoid but spending $100 for one of the "top sellers" on Amazon seems like a poor choice. It is currently $411 on Amazon.

 
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Big Phoenix

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Hey guys. I want to get a starter telescope for looking at shit with the kids. I'm thinking it would be cool to get something that finds the shit for you.

Below is the one I am looking at. Anyone with experience with this family? I don't know what to look for and what to avoid but spending $100 for one of the "top sellers" on Amazon seems like a poor choice. It is currently $411 on Amazon.

I wouldn't go with that for a first telescope for two reasons;

1) Realistically with what you can see with something that size it's very easy to find with your eyes or a cheap pair of binoculars. With an azimuth mount it's pretty easy to get the hang of pointing a telescope.

2) A lot of money to drop on something that your kids may have little interest in and only use a few times.

Imo I'd go with something like this;


It's what I have and from all the reading I did it's as good as it gets for a beginner scope until you start stopping serious cash on a larger mirror and quality eye pieces to go with it. I'd also pick up a collimeter for easy aligning and maybe a phone mount to take a few pictures.

You can probably find that for cheaper,I just used the Amazon page to show you it.
 

BrotherWu

MAGA
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I wouldn't go with that for a first telescope for two reasons;

1) Realistically with what you can see with something that size it's very easy to find with your eyes or a cheap pair of binoculars. With an azimuth mount it's pretty easy to get the hang of pointing a telescope.

2) A lot of money to drop on something that your kids may have little interest in and only use a few times.

Imo I'd go with something like this;


It's what I have and from all the reading I did it's as good as it gets for a beginner scope until you start stopping serious cash on a larger mirror and quality eye pieces to go with it. I'd also pick up a collimeter for easy aligning and maybe a phone mount to take a few pictures.

You can probably find that for cheaper,I just used the Amazon page to show you it.

Hey BP I can't see that link.
 

BrutulTM

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Maybe I just don't get it but I don't understand what the draw of telescopes as a hobby is. It's pretty fun to see Saturn's rings or Jupiter's moons, but after that you're pretty much done. Stars through a telescope just look like...stars.
 

Big Phoenix

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Maybe I just don't get it but I don't understand what the draw of telescopes as a hobby is. It's pretty fun to see Saturn's rings or Jupiter's moons, but after that you're pretty much done. Stars through a telescope just look like...stars.
Which is why I recommended not spending $500. To start seeing various galaxies and such youre really gonna need to spend ALOT of money and make time to get somewhere pretty dark.

I take mine out a few times a year. Theres just something about seeing the light straight from Jupiter or Saturn.
 

MusicForFish

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100km to 320km...minor planet sized comet. Pretty cool.
 
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Burns

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100km to 320km...minor planet sized comet. Pretty cool.

One trip around the sun has been calculated to take 612,190 years.
 
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Cybsled

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Insane to think about the fact that the last time it was even close to Earth, Homo Sapiens didn't even exist as a species
 
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Mudcrush Durtfeet

Hungry Ogre
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One trip around the sun has been calculated to take 612,190 years.
Note that we probably can only detect it because it's on the near side of it's orbit. Like probably 99% of the time it would be too far to be detected. It's not the only large asteroid like object that is like this - it strongly suggests that there are HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of such objects out there, most too far to see.
 
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