Space, Planets and eclipses

[allworkboy]

What? I don't see anything weird in that photo. By the way this morning on the news they said 30 space rocks are suppose to come near us or hit us this week.

[JustKelli]

Originally Posted by allworkboy

What? I don't see anything weird in that photo. By the way this morning on the news they said 30 space rocks are suppose to come near us or hit us this week.

You aren't trying hard enough. Look again and think outside the box this time.

If I may be so bold, it is actually 3 rocks not 30. They are SH3, SN3 and SP. None are a threat.

All will travel at approximately speeds of 15 kilometers per second and SN3 will come within 525,000 miles from earth or twice the distance of the Moon. Still a little close for comfort in my opinion.

[JustKelli]

^^^^^ Look into the sky for the moon silhouette.

This one is cool but should it really be some random guy in Crimea with a homemade telescope who finds something like this? Shouldn't it be NASA or some space agency? What if this thing were a threat...

Good for this guy though who they named it after. 2.13 miles per second, holy hell that is fast!

A Second Interstellar Visitor Has Arrived in Our Solar System. This Time, Astronomers Think They Know Where It Came From

For the second time ever, astronomers have detected an interstellar object plunging through our solar system. But this time, researchers think they know where it came from.

Gennady Borisov, an amateur astronomer working with his own telescope in Crimea,*first spotted*the interstellar*comet*on Aug. 30. His find made the object the first interstellar visitor discovered since*oblong 'Oumuamua*flashed through our solar neighborhood back in 2017. Now, in a new paper, a team of Polish researchers has calculated the path this new comet — known as Comet 2I/Borisov or (in early descriptions) as C/2019 Q4 — took to arrive in our sun's gravity well. And that path leads back to a binary*red dwarf*star system 13.15 light-years away, known as Kruger 60.

When you rewind Comet Borisov's path through space, you'll find that 1 million years ago, the object passed just 5.7 light-years from the center of Kruger 60, moving just 2.13 miles per second (3.43 kilometers per second), the researchers wrote.

That's fast in human terms —— about the top speed of an*X-43A Scramjet, one of*the fastest aircraft*ever built. But an X-43A Scramjet can't overcome the sun's gravity to escape our solar system. And the researchers found that if the comet were really moving that slowly at a distance of no more than 6 light-years from Kruger 60, it probably wasn't just passing by. That's probably the star system it came from, they said. At some point in the distant past, Comet Borisov lively orbited those stars the way comets in our system orbit ours.

Ye Quanzhi, an astronomer and comet expert at the University of Maryland who wasn't involved in this paper, told Live Science that the evidence pinning Comet 2I/Borisov to Kruger 60 is pretty convincing based on the data available so far.

"If you have an interstellar comet and you want to know where it came from, then you want to check two things," he said. "First, has this comet had a small pass distance from a planetary system? Because if it's coming from there, then its trajectory must intersect with the location of that system."

Though the 5.7 light-years between the new comet and Kruger may seem bigger than a "small gap" — nearly 357,000 times Earth's distance from the sun — it's close enough to count as "small" for these sorts of calculations, he said.*

"Second," Ye added, "usually comets are ejected from a planetary system due to gravitational interactions with major planets in that system."

In our solar system, that might look like Jupiter snagging a comet that's falling toward the sun, slingshotting it around in a brief, partial orbit and then flinging it away toward*interstellar space.

"This ejection speed has a limit," Ye said. "It can't be infinite because planets have a certain mass," and the mass of a planet determines how hard it can throw a comet into the void. "Jupiter is pretty massive," he added, "but you can't have a planet that's 100 times more massive than Jupiter because then it would be a star."

That mass threshold sets an upper limit on the speeds of comets escaping star systems, Ye said. And the authors of this paper showed that Comet 2I/Borisov fell within the minimum speed and distance from Kruger 60 to suggest it originated there —assuming their calculations of its trajectory are correct.

Studying interstellar comets is exciting, Ye said, because it offers a rare opportunity to study distant solar systems*using the precise tools scientists employ when examining our own. Astronomers can look at Comet 2I/Borisov using telescopes that might reveal details of the comet's surface. They can figure out whether it behaves like*comets in our own system*(so far, it has) or does anything unusual, like 'Oumuamua famously did. That's a whole category of research that usually isn't possible with distant solar systems, where small objects only ever appear —— if they're visible at all —— as faint, discolored shadows on their suns.

This research, Ye said, means that anything we learn about Comet Borisov could be a lesson about Kruger 60, a nearby star system where*no exoplanets*have been discovered. 'Oumuamua, by contrast, seems to have come from the general direction of the bright star Vega, but according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, researchers don't believe that's where the object originally came from,*instead suggesting it likely came from a newly-forming star system*(though researchers aren't sure which one).. That would make Comet Borisov the first interstellar object ever traced to its home system, if these results are confirmed.

However, the paper's authors were careful to point out that these results shouldn't yet be considered conclusive. Astronomers are still collecting more data about Comet 2I/Borisov's path through space, and additional data may reveal that the original trajectory was wrong and that the comet came from somewhere else.

The paper tracing the comet's origin has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it's available on the preprint server*arXiv.

[JustKelli]

Looks innocent enough right?

That is the SpaceX constellation of satellites in low earth orbit , there are 60 of them currently as of this image from May 23rd 2019. They already have permission to launch 12,000 more and made an application to build and launch another 30,000.

Chances are they will never come anywhere near that many but to put it in perspective, there are currently around 2,000 worldwide combined functioning satellites in low orbit...

Can you say overkill

[LongTimeLu]

There's already been one near miss when another satelite had to move out of Elon's way (here)
And that is with 'only' 60?

It'll be raining satelites before he has a thousand up there

[JustKelli]

Originally Posted by LongTimeLu

There's already been one near miss when another satelite had to move out of Elon's way (here)
And that is with 'only' 60?

It'll be raining satelites before he has a thousand up there

See that spaceship looking thing in the foreground, those are 60 satellites stacked for release.

SpaceX plans to put more than 40,000 satellites in space

SpaceX has filed documents with telecommunications authorities that show it has plans to launch 30,000 small satellites – that is roughly triple the number put into orbit by humans in history so far.

The documents were filed last week with the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency that coordinates the launch of satellites. The filings show that the space firm owned by Elon Musk plans to launch 20 sets of 1500 satellites. The plans will need approval from other bodies and it may be several years before the satellites can be launched.

SpaceX already has permission to put nearly 12,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, and 60 of these are already up there. It plans to use these to create a wireless internet service called Starlink.

The firm says the new satellites are to meet future internet demand, but they will also be well situated for Earth observation. As they will be between 330 and 580 kilometres above Earth, they could be used for taking high-resolution pictures or video of the surface.

Such orbits pose little risk of creating long-term orbital debris because the atmosphere there is thick enough to drag satellites or pieces of space junk down where they will burn up.*SpaceX is also making the satellites black to reduce their impact on astronomical observations.*However, the number of satellites being proposed is unprecedented.

“With that many satellites, there does need to be a very, very close look at the collision risk, disposal and re-entry risks,” says Hugh Lewis at the University of Southampton, UK. “SpaceX will have learned a lot from their first generation of 60 Starlinks, but the more satellites you have in a given volume of space, the more close approaches you will have.”

SpaceX told*New Scientist*that demand for fast, reliable internet is escalating and that it is “taking steps to responsibly scale Starlink’s total network capacity and data density to meet the growth in users’ anticipated needs”.

[LongTimeLu]

Originally Posted by JustKelli

See that spaceship looking thing in the foreground, those are 60 satellites stacked for release.

Yup! And it's a scary thought that Elon will have a monopoly on space internet.
... and all future launches coz they'll have to ask his satellites to make a window to be able to get through safely.

It's already been shown with the collision avoidance system that he can't drive 'em for shit

[JustKelli]

NASA Teams Up with $100 Million Breakthrough Listen Project to Search for Intelligent Aliens

By*Mike Wall*-*Space.com Senior Writer2 hours ago*Space*

NASA's newest planet hunter is joining the hunt for intelligent aliens.

Scientists working on the space agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission will collaborate with the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project in the*search for extraterrestrial intelligence(SETI), members of both teams announced today (Oct. 23).

"It's exciting that the world's most powerful SETI search, with our partner facilities across the globe, will be collaborating with the TESS team and our most capable planet-hunting machine," Pete Worden, executive director of Breakthrough Initiatives, a program that includes the Breakthrough Listen project,*said in a statement.*

"We're looking forward to working together as we try to answer one of the most profound questions about our place in the universe: Are we alone?" Worden added.

Breakthrough Listen Will Search a Million Stars for Alien Life

TESS*launched to Earth orbit in April 2018, on a mission to hunt for alien planets circling bright, relatively nearby stars. The spacecraft does this work via the "transit method," which looks for slight dips in star brightness caused when an orbiting planet crosses the star's face from TESS' perspective.

This strategy was used to great effect by TESS' predecessor, NASA's*Kepler space telescope, which discovered about 70% of the 4,000 or so known alien worlds. But TESS will likely be even more prolific, finding perhaps 10,000 or more new exoplanets over the course of its two-year primary mission, team members have said.

To date, TESS has spotted more than 1,000 "objects of interest," 29 of which*are confirmed alien planets.

Because TESS is focusing on stars in the sun's cosmic neighborhood, some of the mission's finds will be suitable for follow-up studies by other instruments. For example, NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope, an $8.8 billion observatory scheduled to launch in 2021, should be able to probe the atmospheres of multiple TESS-discovered planets for biosignature gases, agency officials have said.

Breakthrough Listen plans to do scans of its own, but the organization will be looking for "technosignatures" coming from TESS worlds. Technosignatures are indicators of advanced alien civilizations, and they come in many possible forms —*including "leakage" from TV and radio broadcasts, *which could theoretically betray humanity's presence to intelligent aliens.

Breakthrough Listen will now add TESS objects of interests to its target list, scanning promising worlds with a range of instruments, including the Green Bank and Parkes radio telescopes in West Virginia and Australia, respectively; the MeerKAT radio array in South Africa; and the Automated Planet Finder optical telescope in California. The two teams will also work together to help refine Breakthrough Listen's data analysis strategy.*

"We are very enthusiastic about joining the Breakthrough Listen SETI search," TESS Deputy Science Director Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in the same statement. "Out of all the exoplanet endeavors, only SETI holds the promise for identifying signs of intelligent life."

Researchers will also look for anomalies in the stellar "light curves" TESS collects. Such oddities could potentially be caused by orbiting megastructures built by advanced civilizations —*a hypothesis that's gotten an airing recently thanks to analyses of Kepler observations.

"The discovery by the Kepler spacecraft of*Boyajian's Star, an object with wild, and apparently random, variations in its light curve, sparked great excitement and a range of possible explanations, of which megastructures were just one," Andrew Siemion, leader of the Breakthrough Listen science team at the University of California, Berkeley's SETI Research Center, said in the same statement.

"Follow-up observations have suggested that dust particles in orbit around the star are responsible for the dimming, but studies of anomalies like this are expanding our knowledge of astrophysics, as well as casting a wider net in the search for technosignatures," Siemion added.

Breakthrough Initiatives was founded in 2015 by billionaire tech investor Yuri Milner to investigate life in the universe. Other Breakthrough Initiative projects include Breakthrough Watch, which aims to study nearby rocky exoplanets, and*Breakthrough Starshot, which is developing technology to explore alien worlds up close.

[JustKelli]

If you are into stars and planets, check out this totally interactive website... tons of data.

Enter your city into the search box and voila.

http://timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/

[JustKelli]

Last transit of Mercury until 2032

Posted by*Bruce McClure*in*TONIGHT*|November 10, 2019

Photo at top: Mercury transit, May 9, 2016

Mercury – the innermost planet of our solar system – will transit the sun on November 11, 2019. In other words, Mercury will pass directly in front of the sun and be visible through telescopes with solar filters as a small black dot crossing the sun’s face. It’ll be visible in part from most of Earth’s globe. The entire transit is visible from South America, eastern North America, and far-western Africa.

The last transit of Mercury was in 2016. The next one won’t be until 2032.

Be aware that this is a*morning*event on November 11, according to U.S. clocks.*Mercury will come into view on the sun’s face around 7:36 a.m.*Eastern Standard Time*(12:36 UTC;*translate UTC to your time) on November 11. It’ll make a leisurely journey across the sun’s face, reaching greatest transit (closest to sun’s center) at approximately 10:20 a.m. EST (15:20 UTC) and finally exiting around 1:04 p.m. EST (18:04 UTC). The entire 5 1/2 hour path across the sun will be visible across the U.S. East – with magnification and proper solar filters – while those in the U.S. West can observe the transit already in progress after sunrise.

You need a telescope and solar filters to view the transit. Mercury’s diameter is only 1/194th of that of the sun, as seen from Earth. That’s why the eclipse master*Fred Espenak*recommends using a telescope with a magnification of 50 to 100 times for witnessing the event.

Unless you are well-versed with the telescope and how to properly use*solar filters, we advise you to seek out a public program via a nearby observatory or astronomy club.*Never look at the sun through a telescope.