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I just saw the moon

CrazyDiamond

Crosseyed & Painless
I do not disagree with your comments, however, the U.S. isn't solely to blame...many countries need to shoulder that.

The math might not be completely accurate but it's good enough for this...The Falcon 9 rocket runs on fossil fuels, namely Rocket Propellant 1 or RP-1, which is highly refined kerosene. Each launch burns 29,600 gallons or 112,184 Kilograms, with each Kg of fuel releasing 3 Kg of CO2, so each launch releases 336,552 Kg of CO2.

A flight from London to New York City has a carbon footprint of 986 Kg, so a SpaceX launch is the equivalent of flying 341 people across the Atlantic. It sounds terrible, until you realize that that is about the number of people that fit into one 777-300, which can carry 45,220 gallons of fuel. So overall, one transatlantic flight of a 777 is considerably worse than a flight of the Falcon 9, and they do this hundreds of times a day.

If you attribute a quarter of the fuel to passengers on the 4-person Crew Dragon capsule, that's 28,046 kg of kerosene, which releases 84,138 kg of CO2, or 85 times as much CO2 per person as a flight across the Atlantic. However, the people who can afford these flights will all be billionaires, and when they travel on their private jets pump out 8 times as much CO2 per person, and use just as much fuel on the round trip. (The Crew Dragon has gravity for the return.) So a trip to the ISS puts out only 5 times as much CO2 as a round trip to London on a Bombardier Global 6000. They do that a lot; it is a lot more important to worry about the impact of these stupid private jets than it is to worry about rockets.

All of this is a circular way of concluding that there are lots of things to worry about when it comes to CO2 emissions, but a couple of rich people riding rockets is probably not one of them.

At least Elon is trying to offset SpaceX's carbon footprint with his other company, Tesla.

Now, let’s see what Tesla is doing in terms of reducing CO2 emissions from motorcars by getting people out of combustion engine vehicles and into EVs. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average passenger vehicle emits 4,600 kg of CO2 per year.

In other words, one SpaceX launch produces about as much CO2 as 59 average combustion engine vehicles do in one year. Putting it in that perspective, it shows just how much CO2 cars produce each year.

Over the past 10 years, SpaceX has launched Falcon 9 some 89 times — about nine times a year. This equates to the yearly CO2 output of around 529 cars. Honestly, I was expecting that figure to be much higher.

Purely from an emissions perspective, Musk would have to get 530 or more drivers out of their gasoline vehicles and into Teslas for a year (based on the fact they’re zero emission vehicles when driving) to offset the CO2 produced during a year of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launches.

Tesla sold just over 367,000 vehicles globally in 2019, it’s also important to note that once in a Tesla, drivers aren’t like to change back to a combustion engine car after just one year. With all that in mind, it seems Tesla is clearly doing more than enough to carbon offset SpaceX launches purely from an emissions point of view.

And the militarization of space started a long time ago and not by just the U.S.; lots of countries have military satellites...I don't like that either.
 

macbill

Oh No! Mr macbill!!
Staff member
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Dio

Sacraponator
My long awaited handmade telescope arrived yesterday! It's a 16“ inch dobson telescope. And the same evening I had had clear skies which is unique when getting new astrogear. :D




It took long before it got really dark but I got to look at the moon. I snapped this picture with my phone through the eyepiece;



When it got properly dark I went to Messier 13 which was a sight to behold.
It was a fun first night my new toy!

Here is a picture I took through my solar scope of the last solar eclipse. At the southern edge you can see a prominence.

 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
One of the least interrupted videos of the Dragon landing of the first stage today. The flight was a launch of a new GPS satellite for the "Space Force" (I laugh every time I say that). Speaking of the "Space Force", shouldn't they have to pay royalties to the Roddenberry estate?
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cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
As @cybrguy guy said, great video of the landing...this is the shortest clip I've found as of the time of posting.
Blatant rip off Star Trek and ya they should pay royalties. Might we be seeing the beginnings of a Federation? Doubtful with the current state of how humans deal with each other.
I think the movie 2010 was probably instructive...
 

kel

FuckMisogynists!
Germany, Italy, Russia, America, Japan, India... any others? are all clamouring to get to the moon and stake claims.

China/Russa ILRS and the US Artemis programmes are essentially two factions looking to undertake, well... there's no polite way to put it... a lunar land grab for mining rights!

We're literally seeing a lunar 'gold rush' and while there are international space laws that govern this kind of thing, who is going to enforce them 250,000 miles away from earth?

How this will play out is anyone's guess... :shrug:
 

Stu

Maconheiro
Staff member
China/Russa ILRS and the US Artemis programmes are essentially two factions looking to undertake, well... there's no polite way to put it... a lunar land grab for mining rights!


How this will play out is anyone's guess... :shrug:
You don't have to guess. It's playing out now on Apple TV. :p


:peace:
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal

Dio

Sacraponator
EPIC! More please! This is awesome @Dio and I really look forward to more images from you. :science:
Thank you. Unfortunately I don't have the equipment to take really nice pictures of deepsky objects which can be observed in great detail with this telescope.
I only use my smartphone to take pictures so it will be limited to bright objects like the moon and planets. But I can't wait to check those with my new telescope. And I'll be certainly taking pictures of those. Stay tuned!
 

CrazyDiamond

Crosseyed & Painless
@Dio, it doesn't matter, I'd like to see any pics you produce.

Apologies for the lack of big images this week. I blame @~vapeslut.xo~ @arb @Shit Snacks for keeping @cybrguy and I away from this thread by getting sucked into the "What should be my next glass thread" :rofl: :lol: :lmao:

Anyways...lol...on to the images and video...

NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a about 25 light-years across blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. A triumvirate of astro-imagers ( Joe, Glenn, Russell) created this sharp portrait of the cosmic bubble. Their telescopic collaboration collected over 30 hours of narrow band image data isolating light from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The oxygen atoms produce the blue-green hue that seems to enshroud the detailed folds and filaments. Visible within the nebula, NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away.
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If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well-known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, a dark sky, and some sophisticated image processing. The resulting digitally-enhanced image shows many breathtaking features. Diagonal across the image right is part of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Visible there are vast clouds of bright stars and long filaments of dark and intricate dust. Rising vertically on the image left are dark dust bands known as the Dark River. Several of the bright stars on the left are part of Scorpius' head and claws, and include the bright star Antares. Numerous red emission nebulas, blue reflection nebulas, and dark filaments became visible as the deep 17-hour expo image developed. Scorpius appears prominently in southern skies after sunset during the middle of the year.
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Arp 299 is a system located about 140 million light-years from Earth, containing two galaxies that are merging, which has created a partially blended mix of stars from each galaxy.
Data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory reveals 25 bright X-ray sources sprinkled throughout the Arp 299 concoction. Fourteen of these sources are such strong emitters of X-rays that astronomers categorize them as "ultra-luminous X-ray sources," or ULXs.
This composite image of Arp 299 contains X-ray data from Chandra (pink), higher-energy X-ray data from NuSTAR (purple), and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (white and faint brown). Arp 299 also emits copious amounts of infrared light that have been detected by observatories such as the Spitzer Space Telescope.
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This image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5037, in the constellation of Virgo. First documented by William Herschel in 1785, the galaxy lies about 150 million light-years away from Earth. Despite this distance, we can see the delicate structures of gas and dust within the galaxy in extraordinary detail. This detail is possible using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), whose combined exposures created this image.
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Astronomers have detected X-rays from Uranus for the first time, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, as shown in this image from March 2021. This result may help scientists learn more about this enigmatic ice giant planet in our solar system.
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and has two sets of rings around its equator. The planet, which has four times the diameter of Earth, rotates on its side, making it different from all other planets in the solar system. Since Voyager 2 was the only spacecraft to ever fly by Uranus, astronomers currently rely on telescopes much closer to Earth, like Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope, to learn about this distant and cold planet that is made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.
In the new study, researchers used Chandra observations taken in Uranus in 2002 and then again in 2017. They saw a clear detection of X-rays from the first observation, just analyzed recently, and a possible flare of X-rays in those obtained fifteen years later.
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This wide-field image shows the patch of sky around the star cluster NGC 3572 and its associated gas clouds. This view was created from photographs forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The spikes and blue circles around the stars in this picture are artifacts of the telescope and the photographic process.
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The Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has captured the best image so far of the star cluster NGC 3572, a gathering of young stars, and its spectacular surroundings. This new image shows how the clouds of gas and dust around the cluster have been sculpted into whimsical bubbles, arcs and the odd features known as elephant trunks by the stellar winds flowing from the bright stars. The brightest of these cluster stars are heavier than the Sun and will end their short lives as supernova explosions.
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This pan video takes a close look at the spectacular Lupus 3 star-forming region. A dark cloud of cosmic dust snakes across the picture, illuminated by the brilliant light of new stars. This dense cloud is a star-forming region called Lupus 3, where dazzlingly hot stars are born from collapsing masses of gas and dust. This image was created from images taken using the VLT Survey Telescope and the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and is the most detailed image taken so far of this region.

This zoom sequence starts with a view of the central parts of the Milky Way. We close in on a region in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). The final view is a combined image from data from both the VLT Survey Telescope and the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. It shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already burst out of their dusty stellar nursery. This cloud is known as Lupus 3 and it lies about 600 light-years from Earth. It is likely that the Sun formed in a similar star formation region more than four billion years ago.
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
It's interesting (to me) that the best argument against extraterrestrial travel, and especially interstellar travel, is that it seems likely impossible due to our current understanding of physics. But we need to consider that our space technology is really in it's infancy. We have only had telescopes, for Gaia sake, for less than 450 years. What if we are talking about civilizations that have existed for thousands of years, or tens of thousands, or more? It seems such a ridiculously narrow view to imagine that we truly get this stuff. We are more likely babies in a universe of ancients and whether we can even survive our own childhood is far from certain.

While it is certainly possible that some other nation has advanced past us in aviation technology, I think it is extremely unlikely that anyone could secretly advance to the degree necessary to explain some of the non ballistic motion that some of the observed UAPs seem to show. To me it seems totally reasonable that some of these craft may be extraterrestrial in origin. Frankly, that seems much more likely to me. Yes, I am a lover of science fiction, but much of what we hold in our hands and use every day, and especially what we have so far accomplished in space, was all science fiction when I started reading it. It may be time to start thinking seriously about how we will deal with knowledge of "alien" creatures, and maybe more importantly, with the fact of them and interacting with them. After all, the prospect of Gort being in charge is not a particularly welcoming one...
 

CrazyDiamond

Crosseyed & Painless
@cybrguy I couldn't agree more with ALL of your assessments. I have almost no doubt that they are not from here and the reason for that is along the lines of what you said above. Our current understanding of physics says it's not possible, but how many times in our history have we advanced are understanding of physics...CONSTANTLY, which tells me we have a long way to go in that field, and that these UAP's exhibit physics we have not comprehended yet or understand how to control.
 

Bazinga

Well-Known Member
It's interesting (to me) that the best argument against extraterrestrial travel, and especially interstellar travel, is that it seems likely impossible due to our current understanding of physics. But we need to consider that our space technology is really in it's infancy. We have only had telescopes, for Gaia sake, for less than 450 years. What if we are talking about civilizations that have existed for thousands of years, or tens of thousands, or more? It seems such a ridiculously narrow view to imagine that we truly get this stuff. We are more likely babies in a universe of ancients and whether we can even survive our own childhood is far from certain.

While it is certainly possible that some other nation has advanced past us in aviation technology, I think it is extremely unlikely that anyone could secretly advance to the degree necessary to explain some of the non ballistic motion that some of the observed UAPs seem to show. To me it seems totally reasonable that some of these craft may be extraterrestrial in origin. Frankly, that seems much more likely to me. Yes, I am a lover of science fiction, but much of what we hold in our hands and use every day, and especially what we have so far accomplished in space, was all science fiction when I started reading it. It may be time to start thinking seriously about how we will deal with knowledge of "alien" creatures, and maybe more importantly, with the fact of them and interacting with them. After all, the prospect of Gort being in charge is not a particularly welcoming one...
I'm ready - Klaatu barada nikto.
 

CrazyDiamond

Crosseyed & Painless
The two space stations...
These two panels, composed of video frames made with a safe solar telescope and hydrogen alpha filter, show remarkably sharp details on the solar disk and giant prominences along the Sun's edge on June 6 (top) and June 18. Taken from Beijing, China, they also show a transit of the International Space Station and China's new Tiangong Space Station in silhouette against the bright Sun. The International Space Station is near center in the bottom panel, crossing the solar disk left of bright active region AR2833 and below a large looping solar filament. The Chinese space station is below solar active region AR2827 and right of center in the top panel, seen as a smaller, combined "+" and "-" shape. The pictures of the transiting orbital outposts were taken with the same equipment and at the same pixel scale, with the International Space Station some 492 kilometers away. The Chinese space station was over 400 kilometers from the camera.
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Grand design spiral galaxy Messier 99 looks majestic on a truly cosmic scale. This recently processed full galaxy portrait stretches over 70,000 light-years across M99. The sharp view is a combination of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared image data from the Hubble Space Telescope. About 50 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Bernices, the face-on spiral is a member of the nearby Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Also cataloged as NGC 4254, a close encounter with another Virgo cluster member has likely influenced the shape of its well-defined, blue spiral arms.
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Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy.
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A cataclysmic cosmic collision takes center stage in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image features the interacting galaxy pair IC 1623, which lies around 275 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (the Whale). The two galaxies are in the final stages of merging, and astronomers expect a powerful inflow of gas to ignite a frenzied burst of star formation in the resulting compact starburst galaxy.
This interacting pair of galaxies is a familiar sight; Hubble captured IC 1623 in 2008 using two filters at optical and infrared wavelengths on the Advanced Camera for Surveys. This image incorporates data from Wide Field Camera 3, and combines observations taken in eight filters spanning infrared to ultraviolet wavelengths to reveal the finer details of IC 1623.
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This picture from the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO's Paranal Observatory shows the remarkable super star cluster Westerlund 1 (eso1034). This exceptionally bright cluster lies about 16,000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Ara (The Altar). It contains hundreds of very massive and brilliant stars, all of which are just a few million years old — babies by stellar standards. But our view of this cluster is hampered by gas and dust that prevents most of the visible light from the cluster's stars from getting to Earth.
Now, astronomers studying images of Westerlund have spotted something unexpected in this cluster. Around one of the stars — known as W26, a red supergiant and possibly the biggest star known— they have discovered clouds of glowing hydrogen gas, shown as green features in this new image.
Such glowing clouds around massive stars are very rare, and are even rarer around a red supergiant— this is the first ionized nebula discovered around such a star. W26 itself would be too cool to make the gas glow; the astronomers speculate that the source of the ionizing radiation may be either hot blue stars elsewhere in the cluster, or possibly a fainter, but much hotter, companion star to W26.
W26 will eventually explode as a supernova. The nebula that surrounds it is very similar to the nebula surrounding SN1987A, the remnants of a star that went supernova in 1987 [2]. SN1987A was the closest observed supernova to Earth since 1604, and as such it gave astronomers a chance to explore the properties of these explosions. Studying objects like this new nebula around W26 will help astronomers to understand the mass loss processes around these massive stars, which eventually lead to their explosive demise.
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This wide-field image shows the patch of sky around the Toby Jug Nebula (IC 2220). This view was created from photographs forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The spikes and blue circles around the stars in this picture are artifacts of the telescope and the photographic process.
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Located about 1200 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Carina (The Ship’s Keel), the Toby Jug Nebula, more formally known as IC 2220, is an example of a reflection nebula. It is a cloud of gas and dust illuminated from within by the central star, designated HD 65750.
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Videos of the nebula in the last two images are in the next two videos.

This video sequence starts with a view of the spectacular Milky Way. As we zoom in, we can see the constellation of Carina (The Keel) and then the curious shape of the Toby Jug Nebula as captured in an image from the Very Large Telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Located about 1200 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Carina (The Ship's Keel), the Toby Jug Nebula, more formally known as IC 2220, is an example of a reflection nebula. It is a cloud of gas and dust illuminated from within by the central star, designated HD 65750. This pan video gives a closer look at this rare object.

Bonus Video: STARFORGE: A Star Formation Simulation
How do stars form? Most form in giant molecular clouds located in the central disk of a galaxy. The process is started, influenced, and limited by the stellar winds, jets, high energy starlight, and supernova explosions of previously existing stars. The featured video shows these complex interactions as computed by the STARFORGE simulation of a gas cloud 20,000 times the mass of our Sun. In the time-lapse visualization, lighter regions indicate denser gas, color encodes the gas speed (purple is slow, orange is fast), while dots indicate the positions of newly formed stars. As the video begins, a gas cloud spanning about 50 light years begins to condense under its own gravity. Within 2 million years, the first stars form, while newly formed massive stars are seen to expel impressive jets. The simulation is frozen after 4.3 million years, and the volume then rotated to gain a three-dimensional perspective. Much remains unknown about star formation, including the effect of the jets in limiting the masses of subsequently formed stars.
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
So, I have mixed feeling about Virgin Orbit and their aircraft launched rockets, but it IS spaceflight so I guess not launching from the surface of the earth shouldn't disqualify them from the interest and excitement that is built into this amazing science. So, it is proper, I think, to celebrate their customers satellites getting to orbit today. And, of course, who doesn't love Tubular Bells.
 
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