[jon boy]

bloody cheapskate scientists.

[Bastian]

Originally Posted by Tokolosh

They normally do that with infrared images and also to enhance photos that have been affected by light pollution.

Besides, almost all photography is photoshopped nowadays.

Also, a lot of things in space are only visible on a photo when you have a really long exposure time.. I guess a galaxy looks rather boring if you look at it 'real time'. Not even close to the bright, wonderful images you find in astronomy books.. or do they?

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by jon boy

they colour in all the pics! oh man well thats it then i am uttery devastated.

they do not "color in" all the pics.

some are in true color (visible wavelength)
some are in x-rays (non visible to humans) so they assigne colors to the ends of the xray spectrum so you can see the structure
some are in infrared which gives a "gray" tonal image so they assigne colors to the different spctra of difrerent elements
some are in gamma rays. (non visible to human eyes)
some are in radio waves (non visible)

etc
it is not arbitrary

[Hip Priest]

Quite right, although it's almost a shame. I had a vision of all the boffin tech dudes at NASA suddenly stopping work and getting the crayons out.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by Hip Priest

Quite right, although it's almost a shame. I had a vision of all the boffin tech dudes at NASA suddenly stopping work and getting the crayons out.

that is their creative outlet! the crayons!

[Tokolosh]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

they do not "color in" all the pics.

some are in true color (visible wavelength)
some are in x-rays (non visible to humans) so they assigne colors to the ends of the xray spectrum so you can see the structure
some are in infrared which gives a "gray" tonal image so they assigne colors to the different spctra of difrerent elements
some are in gamma rays. (non visible to human eyes)
some are in radio waves (non visible)

etc
it is not arbitrary

The elaborator is in the house!

[Rob Instigator]

fo sheeeeezie!

[Hip Priest]

Comet to Make Brief Flyby

By Rory Sweeney
The Times Leader
01/15/07 9:23 AM PT

Comet McNaught, an unusually bright comet, will be visible from various vantage points on Earth as it flies by, but amateur astronomers will have to get their timing right to catch a glimpse of it. It will be visible only in the minutes just after the sun sets because of its close proximity to the sun.

The amateur astronomy community is abuzz about the coming of perhaps the brightest comet in 30 years.

Under the right conditions, comet McNaught, discovered by R.H. McNaught in August, will be visible as a "fuzzy ball with a tail coming off of it" for the next few days just after the sun sets in the western sky, Kristi Concannon, a physics and astronomy professor at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., said Saturday.

"It will be just above the horizon and just right of where the sun sets," she said, but warned to be punctual. "Because it's so close to the sun, it's not going to be visible at night."

After that, it will be lost in the glare of the sun for a week or so while it orbits around and then will be visible again for a while in the minutes before sunrise, she said.

Comets visible to the naked eye come around about once a decade, she said. The last one, comet Hale-Bopp, caused ripples of excitement beyond the sky-watching community when it was visible for months in 1996 and 1997.

Brighter than comet Hale-Bopp, comet McNaught currently matches the magnitude of comet West, which flashed across the sky in 1975.

Stargazers anticipate the orbit of comet McNaught around the sun will only enhance its visibility.

"What we're hoping is that when it comes back around the sun, it will have released more gas and it could potentially be brighter," bright enough to be visible during the day, Concannon said.
Won't Reveal Much

The event, while spectacular, holds little promise of advancing our understanding of what "are in essence dirty snowballs" from an icy band of leftover material from the forming of the solar system orbiting beyond Pluto.

The material is occasionally "perturbed" into a solar-system-spanning orbit around our sun.

"It's not that common for a comet to be bright enough to be seen during the day, but it has happened before," she said. "For whatever reason or another, this one appears to be releasing a lot of gas."

[Hip Priest]

Intriguing story:


Dwarf planet 'becoming a comet'
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

2003 EL61 is a large, dense, rugby-ball-shaped hunk of rock with a fast rotation rate.

Professor Mike Brown has calculated that the object could be due a close encounter with the planet Neptune.

If so, Neptune's gravity could catapult it into the inner Solar System as a short-period comet.

"If you came back in two million years, EL61 could well be a comet," said Professor Brown, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.

"When it becomes a comet, it will be the brightest we will ever see."

2003 EL61 is a large object; it is as big as Pluto along its longest dimension. It is one of the largest of a swarm of icy objects that inhabit a region of the outer Solar System known as the Kuiper Belt.

But it is extremely unusual: spinning on its axis every four hours, it has developed an elongated shape.

2003 EL61 is apparently composed of rock with just a thin veneer of water-ice covering its surface. Other Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) contain much more water-ice.

Professor Brown's computer simulations show that the object is on a very unstable orbit and set for a close encounter with Neptune.

The eighth planet's gravitational force could either sling the icy rock ball into the inner Solar System as a comet, out into the distant Oort Cloud region, or even into interstellar space.

Orbits of Kuiper Belt Objects tend to be very stable, but the region is thought to be a reservoir for short-period comets.

Occasionally, some of these objects must get tossed inward to become the fizzing lumps of ice and dust that criss-cross our cosmic neighbourhood.

Mike Brown and his colleagues have come up with a scenario to explain 2003 EL61's physical characteristics and behaviour.

About 4.5 billion years ago, the object that became 2003 EL61 was a ball, half composed of ice and half of rock - like Pluto - and about the same size as Pluto.

Some time early in its history, it was smacked, edge on, by another large KBO. This broke off much of 2003 EL61's icy mantle, which coalesced to form several satellites.

As expected, the satellites seem to be composed of very pure water-ice.

Professor Brown suggested that some of 2003 EL61's mantle may already have made it into the inner Solar System as cometary material.

The oblique impact also caused 2003 EL61 to spin rapidly. This rapid rotation elongated 2003 EL61 into the rugby ball shape we see today.

"It's a bit like the story of Mercury," Professor Brown explained.

"Mercury got hit by a large object early in the Solar System. It left mostly a big iron core, with a little bit of rock on the outside. This is mostly a rock core with a little bit of ice on the outside."

Mike Brown outlined details of his work during a plenary lecture at the recent American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

[finding nobody]

Pretty neat Sebastian!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
Awesome stuff^
Look at this SPACE BUBBLE!

 

[Hip Priest]

Hints of huge water reservoirs on Mars

* 19:00 25 January 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* David Shiga

Mars is losing little water to space, according to new research, so much of its ancient abundance may still be hidden beneath the surface.

Dried up riverbeds and other evidence imply that Mars once had enough water to fill a global ocean more than 600 metres deep, together with a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide that kept the planet warm enough for the water to be liquid. But the planet is now very dry and has a thin atmosphere.

Some scientists have proposed that the Red Planet lost its water and CO2 to space as the solar wind stripped molecules from the top of the planet's atmosphere. Measurements by Russia's Phobos-2 probe to Mars in 1989 hinted that the loss was quite rapid.

Now the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has revealed that the rate of loss is much lower. Stas Barabash of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna led a team that used data from Mars Express's ASPERA-3 instrument (Analyzer of Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms).

Its measurements suggest the whole planet loses only about 20 grams per second of oxygen and CO2 to space, only about 1% of the rate inferred from Phobos-2 data.

If this rate has held steady over Mars's history, it would have removed just a few centimetres of water, and a thousandth of the original CO2.

Either some other process removed the water and CO2 or they are still present and hidden somewhere on Mars, probably underground, Barabash says. "We are talking about huge amounts of water," he told New Scientist. "To store it somewhere requires a really big, huge reservoir."

Barabash is not sure what form this reservoir – or reservoirs – would take, but he points to findings from NASA's now lost Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). This data provided evidence that water had gushed down slopes on Mars in recent years, possibly originating from beneath the surface (see Water flows on Mars before our very eyes). "So there might be some possibilities for water existing in liquid form even now," he says.

"If water is there, I think it will put all ideas about human missions to Mars on a completely different level," he says. "It's not only water to support [astronauts], but also a potential fuel." Hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel can be produced from water.

However, the researchers point out that other mechanisms might have removed water and CO2 from Mars, such as asteroid and comet impacts. Or the solar wind might have sheared off of whole chunks of atmosphere rather than individual molecules.

Another possibility is suggested by Mars atmosphere expert David Brain at the University of California in Berkeley, US. He points out that magnetic storms might boost the rate at which the solar wind strips molecules from the atmosphere.

"We believe that solar storms were frequent and more intense early on in the solar system's history," he told New Scientist. Even so, Brain thinks that some of Mars's ancient water and CO2 is still stored in hidden reservoirs.

[Hip Priest]

Moon to blush red during total lunar eclipse

The Moon will blush red as it passes through Earth's shadow in a total lunar eclipse on Saturday. From most locations on Earth, at least part of the 6-hour eclipse will be visible if skies are clear.

The Earth's shadow will completely cover the Moon during the most dramatic phase, which will last a little more than an hour – from 2244 to 2357 GMT. (You can find out the conversion between GMT and your local time here. Scroll to the bottom to find out what GMT is currently.)

If you could watch the eclipse from the surface of the Moon, your surroundings would grow dark as the Sun disappears behind Earth. But the ground would still be lit by an eerie red glow. Looking up, you would see the source of this light: a glowing red ring around Earth.

The red ring is due to sunlight being refracted through the Earth's atmosphere – essentially, the combined glow of all the world's sunrises and sunsets. It is the reason why the Moon is not black but reddish during a total lunar eclipse.
Dust and clouds

The brightness of the eclipsed Moon can vary greatly from eclipse to eclipse. It depends on the amount of dust and clouds in Earth's atmosphere, since these can block some of the refracted sunlight.

The deepest part of the eclipse, when the Moon is completely covered by Earth's shadow, will be visible from all of Europe, Africa, and in Asia westward of central China. It will also be visible in central and eastern North America and all of South America.

From most locations, the Moon will be up for at least part of the eclipse (scroll down for a map of where it will be visible). The eclipse will not be observable at all in a swath of the Pacific Ocean stretching from northwestern Canada to eastern Australia.
Deep shadow

One edge of the Moon's face will begin to subtly darken as the eclipse begins at 2018 GMT. The eclipse will be more obvious after 2130, when the Moon begins to enter into the deepest part of Earth's shadow.

The most spectacular part of the eclipse lasts from 2244 to 2357 GMT, when the Moon is entirely in the deepest part of Earth's shadow. By 0111 GMT on Sunday, the Moon will have left this deep shadow, but will continue to be slightly shaded until 0223 GMT.

Lunar eclipses are much more common than solar eclipses. This is because the Earth is a bigger object, so it casts a bigger shadow that more easily covers the Moon than vice versa.

As many as three lunar eclipses, including partial eclipses, can happen per year. The last total lunar eclipse was on 28 October 2004. The next one will occur on 28 August 2007.

[floatingslowly]

every internet name I use is something strung together from random words on APOD.

R.I.P. Hubble Telescope.

I <3 Mars.

this looks a lot like Oklahoma (but not as flat)...

 

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Rally site of Mars ships in darkness
Site them truth right in front of their kids
Your bound to see a world filled of hatred…and miss,
Man the point of things…
know your wrong..

Oh the point is that, their money cover all of it
In search of life,
you can see their money conquer all of it
See them sparks blazing in the nighttime
See them buying prospects in the moon
See them dancing upon them silver spoons yeah
See them who pay hardships upon him Lord
See them brighter than the morning star


(this was a song about the futility of scientists searching in space for life and the building blocks of life when life is all around us HERE, on earth, where we live....)

I just watched some shit on Nova about this last night. It was disturbing to say the least. NASA can receive a cell phone strength radio signal from SATURN quicker then I CAN CATCH A BUS IN LONG BEACH!
look out for big brother children.

[floatingslowly]

NASA is way too underfunded to be much of a big brother. they are more like a younger step brother that was adopted.

PS: nice sig. praise H.I.M.

[Kallisti23chaos]

***

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

NASA is way too underfunded to be much of a big brother. they are more like a younger step brother that was adopted.

PS: nice sig. praise H.I.M.

its not NASA that is big brother, its that big brother gives NASA the technology to pick up such a small radio transmission from over 1 billion kilometers, aside from the futility of astronomers spending so much time and $$$ looking up in space, more then likely as a distraction from the fucked up situation that exists on the earth....

[Rob Instigator]

outer space rules.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

its not NASA that is big brother, its that big brother gives NASA the technology to pick up such a small radio transmission from over 1 billion kilometers, aside from the futility of astronomers spending so much time and $$$ looking up in space, more then likely as a distraction from the fucked up situation that exists on the earth....

i want them to look MORE into space. and i want them to have more money.


WASHINGTON, Mar. 6, 2007(AP) NASA officials say the space agency is capable of finding nearly all the asteroids that might pose a devastating hit to Earth, but there isn't enough money to pay for the task so it won't get done.

The cost to find at least 90 percent of the 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets by 2020 would be about $1 billion, according to a report NASA will release later this week. The report was previewed Monday at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington.

Congress in 2005 asked NASA to come up with a plan to track most killer asteroids and propose how to deflect the potentially catastrophic ones.

"We know what to do, we just don't have the money," said Simon "Pete" Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center.

These are asteroids that are bigger than 460 feet in diameter _ slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans. They are a threat even if they don't hit Earth because if they explode while close enough _ an event caused by heating in both the rock and the atmosphere _ the devastation from the shockwaves is still immense. The explosion alone could have with the power of 100 million tons of dynamite, enough to devastate an entire state, such as Maryland, they said.

The agency is already tracking bigger objects, at least 3,300 feet in diameter, that could wipe out most life on Earth, much like what is theorized to have happened to dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But even that search, which has spotted 769 asteroids and comets _ none of which is on course to hit Earth _ is behind schedule. It's supposed to be complete by the end of next year.

NASA needs to do more to locate other smaller, but still potentially dangerous space bodies. While an Italian observatory is doing some work, the United States is the only government with an asteroid-tracking program, NASA said.

One solution would be to build a new ground telescope solely for the asteroid hunt, and piggyback that use with other agencies' telescopes for a total of $800 million. Another would be to launch a space infrared telescope that could do the job faster for $1.1 billion. But NASA program scientist Lindley Johnson said NASA and the White House called both those choices too costly.

A cheaper option would be to simply piggyback on other agencies' telescopes, a cost of about $300 million, also rejected, Johnson said.

"The decision of the agency is we just can't do anything about it right now," he added.

Earth got a scare in 2004, when initial readings suggested an 885-foot asteroid called 99942 Apophis seemed to have a chance of hitting Earth in 2029. But more observations showed that wouldn't happen. Scientists say there is a 1-in-45,000 chance that it could hit in 2036.

They think it would mostly likely strike the Pacific Ocean, which would cause a tsunami on the U.S. West Coast the size of the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean wave.

John Logsdon, space policy director at George Washington University, said a stepped-up search for such asteroids is needed.

"You can't deflect them if you can't find them," Logsdon said. "And we can't find things that can cause massive damage."

___

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i want them to look MORE into space. and i want them to have more money.

quoted for the muthafuckin' truth.


throughout earth's ages, the species that have survived catastrophe were those that were able to adapt.

more often than not, these were also the ones that migrated.

solve earth's problems? not likely. it's way too fucked.

evacuation is our only long-term hope.

barring that, having the ability to anticipate and possibly react to a potential epoch-ending event is a no-brainer.

a little big brother paranoia is a good thing; too much and you cripple yrself.