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Astronomy - Planets , Stars & Heavenly Bodies


The Rover

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1 hour ago, luvlz2 said:

I watched the first few minutes of this on Facebook...it's pretty cool...but so far away.  39 light years is inconceivable to  imagine without being able to travel light speed....that is, we haven't achieved this yet...not to say another intelligence hasn't. 

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Well did anyone see the news last night and the new planets that were discovered 40 light years away?  Its fascinating.  And they are going to study these because their distance to the Orange star that is their solar system is about right to support life and hold water.  An Orange dwarf is an old star.  Red or Orange stars are very old, unlike small blues.  Blues are newer.  Orion the Hunter, a constellation in the northern hemisphere holds a star known as Beatlejuice.   A giant orange that is famous

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On 23/02/2017 at 1:03 PM, zepscoda said:

I watched the first few minutes of this on Facebook...it's pretty cool...but so far away.  39 light years is inconceivable to  imagine without being able to travel light speed....that is, we haven't achieved this yet...not to say another intelligence hasn't. 

I took press conference to mean they have found a star with nine planets......which is quite something.

Getting there will take some time, until a Mr Weyland meets a Mr Yutani , we will be exploring locally I hope.......

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Here is an interesting POV I heard in an interview last night....

If there is no other life in the cosmos, that pretty much means there is alien life.

Huh? I hear you say..

- well, mathematically, there IS life out there. The more Earth like planets in the goldilocks zone (far enough from star, but not too far - like our own dust ball is) are being discovered more and more - and that's just in our galaxy. In fact, it's just in the near field of our galaxy - the area where we can detect them with current technology.

This means there should be many thousands of planets similar to Earth (rocky, water probable, in the goldilocks zone). in our rather humungous galaxy (estimate is the Milky Way is home to 200 billion stars, 100 billion "solar systems" with planets)

And how many galaxies are there? THIS - is an interesting number.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

SO - if in all that potential, somehow WE are the only life, it suggests (due to the ridiculous odds of this reality occuring naturally - "by chance" only the ONE TIME) that this reality is in fact a simulation or manufactured. The simulation would have been built by aliens. Therefore, if we are indeed alone, there must be aliens. :)

*The idea of a Personal God type creator - one that is not of this reality but created it, is purely a human construct so I rule that out as having nothing to do with reality. If you do not discount this, good luck to you, this post is irrelevant for you.

Anyway, I thought the comment

If there is no other life in the cosmos, that pretty much means there is alien life.

was very interesting.

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  • 1 month later...

Just started looking in to making some plans for August's total solar eclipse across America.  I've got a favorite motel at the end of Iowa.  That would leave a 2-3 hour drive to reach the totality zone in Eastern Nebraska the next day.  2 and a half minutes is the length in most areas.  Motels and campgrounds in the zone are booking up fast.  Always wanted to see a total solar eclipse.  Don't pass up the only chance in your lifetime.    

  https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/preparing-for-the-august-2017-total-solar-eclipse

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Besides NASA not yet having identified a planet in our Galaxy with Earth like properties, which is difficult with the technology we now have, I just realized that with all of the study of stars and their life cycles, we have yet to witness the birth of a star. Perhaps someday, the instruments may be available to see empirically, a star turning on.

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  • 2 months later...

Reservations have been made.  I'll be in Lincoln, Nebraska for the solar eclipse on August 21st.  Centrally located on I-80 so I can roll East or West thru a storm or cloudy skies if necessary.  Just picked up some properly rated welding glasses for the trip.  If things don't work out, I roll with it and head into Colorado for some R & R of a different sort.  In fact, I'm going to do that either way.....cuz that's the kind of guy I am.

Anybody live in the totality zone ?

 

       

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On 2/24/2017 at 9:49 PM, rm2551 said:

Here is an interesting POV I heard in an interview last night....

If there is no other life in the cosmos, that pretty much means there is alien life.

Huh? I hear you say..

- well, mathematically, there IS life out there. The more Earth like planets in the goldilocks zone (far enough from star, but not too far - like our own dust ball is) are being discovered more and more - and that's just in our galaxy. In fact, it's just in the near field of our galaxy - the area where we can detect them with current technology.

This means there should be many thousands of planets similar to Earth (rocky, water probable, in the goldilocks zone). in our rather humungous galaxy (estimate is the Milky Way is home to 200 billion stars, 100 billion "solar systems" with planets)

And how many galaxies are there? THIS - is an interesting number.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

SO - if in all that potential, somehow WE are the only life, it suggests (due to the ridiculous odds of this reality occuring naturally - "by chance" only the ONE TIME) that this reality is in fact a simulation or manufactured. The simulation would have been built by aliens. Therefore, if we are indeed alone, there must be aliens. :)

*The idea of a Personal God type creator - one that is not of this reality but created it, is purely a human construct so I rule that out as having nothing to do with reality. If you do not discount this, good luck to you, this post is irrelevant for you.

Anyway, I thought the comment

If there is no other life in the cosmos, that pretty much means there is alien life.

was very interesting.

:goodpost:

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  • 2 months later...

Hey, I have heard Planet X or as some call it, Niberu is scheduled to slam into our lovely sphere on Saturday, September 23rd and destroy our planet. This Planet X supposedly is on one hell of an elliptical orbit which has it swing way out into the Ort Cloud and then back where its orbit takes it between Mars & Earth every 24,000 years.

Question: If this were true would we have not experienced serious gravitational forces months ago? Second, being a week away would we not see this planet with the naked eye 24/7? Third: Why do I read this shit???

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  • 7 months later...

The timeanddate web page has a beta section that displays data and graphs for each planet for your area based on the time. It gives the compass direction and the altitude for each planet.

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/112-observational-astronomy/stargazing/technical-questions/698-what-are-altitude-and-azimuth-intermediate

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I got a new telescope! It's an Orion Starseeker IV, with an 150mm primary mirror and a focal length of 750mm. It gives a very clear image at high or low powers, I'm impressed! With a 32mm lens, It makes 23.5 x which gives a huge field of view, all of Pleiades fits at once! With my 9mm lens and a 2x barlow, it makes 160x which is about the highest power that the sky can stand up to around here.  It has "Go To" controls which means that it is computer controlled and can be made to point at thousands of pre programed objects. This is very useful in the light polluted SF Bay Area.  And it weighs less than 20lbs. so I actually use it!

Jupiter rises at sunset and show four fast moving moons. Venus has been visible until about two hours after sunset and shows a cresent rightnow, Saturn, with its spectacular rings, rises at about midnight.

 

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Earth and Jupiter will be very close together tonight.  It's a great time to observe the giant planet, a pair of binoculars will reveal the four huge moons.  The inner most makes an orbit around the 88,000 mile wide planet every 12 hours!  By contrast, the Earth's moon takes over 28 days to orbit out 8,000 mile wide planet.  A small telescope allows you to see the shadow cast on the gas giant's surface by the moons as they traverse the visible side of Jupiter.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/jupiter-opposition-planet-brightest-tuesday-134000107.html

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  • 2 weeks later...

 I find discussions about "Dark Matter" to be quite interesting.  If you're telling me that 85% of the Universe is made up of something you have no clue about, that pretty much means you don't have a clue about anything.  That includes any current laws of Physics that can't account for it....which is all of them !  Once had a Physics teacher claim that the greatest human discovery of all-time was the electromagnetic spectrum and it's subsequent effect on our daily lives.  If Dark Matter is for real, that means there's probably at least a couple similar spectrums we have yet to discover.  Until someone can actually identify and quantify Dark Matter, claims that we're currently living in a computer simulation or other such theories/models that seem like total nonsense, are as valid as any other.        

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  • 2 months later...

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