• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Board Astronomy (contains big images)

Timelord79 (he/him)

Vice Admiral
Admiral
hi everyone.
I’ve been wondering some time now if people here are are actively into Astronomy at any point of the spectrum between casually looking at the stars during a walk and being professional astronomy scientists.

I thought it might be nice to have a dedicated thread to all things stargazing and maybe sharing your own observations and astrophotography?
 
I had started an astrophotography thread years ago, but I haven't been doing so much of it as of late. Plus weather's been terrible and astronomers rely on the weather's whim. Such is the life ;)

I've actually been going to an telescope maker's convention since the early 80's, a convention that got its start in the early 1920's and every summer my Dad and I end up attending. It's a two-day trip for us to get there. My Dad's always had a heavy interest in telescope making, built a 22" Trailer-mounted Dobsonian which won awards and now has a telescope business selling some all over the world. Through him I've met many professionals, some of them beyond mere acquaintances such as David Levy who used to be a regular at the convention health problems limited his engagements. I'm now a full-member of the club that puts on that convention and been building my own telescope which I will actually be entering into competition in a few weeks. Our convention had Dr Alan Stern, the Principal Investigator of the New Horizons program in 2015, and had given us an update on the Pluto flyby with new images mere months before the new stream of images the press would get later. That was exciting. And this year he's back to talk about Ultima Thule.
 
www.cosmoquest.org is a nice place to start. It has Phil Plaits old forum (Bad Astronomy/Universetoday)

Old photographic plates on-line
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-web-archive-astronomical-plates-online.html

A close call
https://www.space.com/fire-evacuation-kitt-peak-observatory-arizona

Asteroids
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-asteroid-impacts-diamond-materials-exceptionally.html

Venus girl and other asteroids
https://www.space.com/asteroid-venus-girl-indigenous-pauma-name
https://www.space.com/lucy-trojan-asteroid-companion-discovery

Asteroid intercept mission simulated
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-simulate-defense-earth-asteroid-impact.html
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2022/07...sday-june-30-on-the-global-streaming-service/
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-t...-pile-asteroid-are-different-than-on-planets/

Bennu
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-insights-surface-asteroid-bennu.html
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-t...steroid-has-far-less-cohesion-than-predicted/

Planet Nine
https://www.inverse.com/science/planet-nine-vera-rubin-telescope

Why Jupiter has no rings
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-jupiter-doesnt-saturn.html

Galaxy distribution and pulsars
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-ai-assisted-analysis-three-dimensional-galaxy-universe.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-hey-siri-galaxy-cluster.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-twinkling-pulsars-mysterious-interstellar-plasma.html

Mars atmosphere
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-method-minerals-terrestrial-martian-atmospheric.html

Exoworlds
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-method-exoplanets.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-effect-earth-orbit-ancient-microorganisms.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-meteorites-simple-metals-catalysts-metabolic.html

Solar filament
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-formation-mechanism-solar-double-decker-filament.html

The Moon
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-change-samples-reveal-young-volcanism.html

de Sitter space
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-holograms-illuminate-de-sitter-space.html

Holograms may conjure up images of interstellar video calls in sci-fi flicks, but for theoretical physicists they can also be mathematical, microscopic models encoding higher-dimensional information onto lower-dimensional surfaces. With entropy-filled black holes, scientists posit that information encoded on the event horizon is proportional to surface area, not to volume as in Euclidean geometry.

Beautiful
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
Last edited:
Oh wow.

That moment when you find your first deep sky object that is not Andromeda or the Orion Nebula.

Today I managed to track the Ring Nebula in the constellation of Lyra.
Once you know where it is, it’s actually easy to find.
It appears larger than Jupiter, though a lot fainter.
 
 
Last edited:
A professor associated with the GAIA project gave a lecture In my hometown last week, but unfortunately I could not attend.

I’m taking a short astronomy course this month and did some star gazing this evening. We looked at the Pleiades.
 
An interesting test of one's vision is to try to count the number of stars one can see in the Pleiades (M45) without the use of an aid such as binoculars or a telescope. In the past I struggled to distinguish six distinct stars and nowadays can see only five. Although the colloquial name in English is the "Seven Sisters", in Japanese the cluster was known as "Mutsuraboshi" or "six stars", but is now called "Subaru" - from which the automobile manufacturer takes its name and logo. In actuality, the cluster contains about a thousand stars.
 
An interesting test of one's vision is to try to count the number of stars one can see in the Pleiades (M45) without the use of an aid such as binoculars or a telescope. In the past I struggled to distinguish six distinct stars and nowadays can see only five. Although the colloquial name in English is the "Seven Sisters", in Japanese the cluster was known as "Mutsuraboshi" or "six stars", but is now called "Subaru" - from which the automobile manufacturer takes its name and logo. In actuality, the cluster contains about a thousand stars.
I struggled to see three :ouch:
 
My homework for this week is to try and spot ISS, which I’m rather excited about. I figured out that I might be able to see it this weekend and I’m hoping the weather stays nice.
 
My homework for this week is to try and spot ISS, which I’m rather excited about. I figured out that I might be able to see it this weekend and I’m hoping the weather stays nice.
Barring airplanes, it's the 2nd brightest object in the night sky. It's always fun to watch it go past.
Depending on how much time you have to do this assignment, there is going to be a Cygnus freighter launch to ISS next month. It's much harder to see, but if you get lucky during its transit, you might be able to see it closing in on ISS, following it closely behind.


https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/
 
https://imgur.com/gallery/C1qMQCc

I think I finally managed to set up a platform to share my most recent pictures properly.

2oQPxXr.jpg

y3gaLaP.jpg

KqQWM2t.jpg

0IbFakg.jpg

tBhTx93.jpg

IR18Zyg.jpg
 
Last edited:
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top