I just saw the moon

CrazyDiamond

CrazyDiamond

Crosseyed & Painless
Also posting this here (also in Favorite Quotes thread) because I felt its important....

I cannot believe how prophetic this was from Carl Sagan in "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" from 1995...


“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...


The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
 
T

Trajectory.

Active Member
CrazyDiamond said:
Also posting this here (also in Favorite Quotes thread) because I felt its important....

I cannot believe how prophetic this was from Carl Sagan in "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" from 1995...


“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...


The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Click to expand...

So very, very true.

It's across the board, including the dumbing down of our culture, and the loss of music. Very sad.
 
macbill

macbill

Oh No! Mr macbill!!
Staff member
florduh

florduh

Well-Known Member
macbill said:
www.space.com

NASA's interstellar Voyager 2 probe resumes communication with Earth

The spacecraft is healthy and has reestablished full communications with Earth.
www.space.com www.space.com
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On Friday (Aug. 4), JPL announced in a mission update that NASA's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia was able to send a command into interstellar space that reoriented the spacecraft and pointed its antenna back towards Earth. Mission controllers had to wait 37 hours to learn if the command was successful. And it was.
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The fact something humans made is now so far away that light takes like a day and a half to reach it is such a mindfuck.
 
Bologna

Bologna

(zombie) Woof.

Best Meteor Shower of the Year Peaks This Weekend​


The NASA All Sky Fireball Network is already detecting the first meteors of this year’s Perseid meteor shower! The meteor shower peaks on the night of August 12 as the Earth passes through the dustiest debris of comet Swift-Tuttle’s trails.

A bright white streak is in the bottom left corner on a dark grey almost black background. On July 26, 2023, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network detected the first Perseid meteor of the year. (NASA/All Sky Fireball Network)

The Perseid meteor shower is often considered to be the best meteor shower of the year due to its high rates and pleasant late-summer temperatures. Unlike last year’s shower coinciding with the full moon, this year’s moon will be a waning crescent, allowing even some of the fainter meteors to be seen.

So, how many can you see?

“People in the U.S. can reasonably expect to see around 40 Perseids in the hour just before dawn on the peak nights. That’s about one every couple of minutes, which is not bad,” said Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “However, we are assuming you are out in the country, well away from cities and suburbs.”

The brighter skies of suburban areas greatly reduce the rates, with 10 or fewer expected in an hour.

You can see the Perseid meteor shower best in the Northern Hemisphere. All you need to catch the show is a clear sky, darkness, and a bit of patience. You don’t need to look in any particular direction; meteors can generally be seen all over the sky.

A graph shows the Perseid Radiant with time. This diagram, based on data from the NASA Fireball Network, shows the change in the direction of the Perseid radiant with time. This is caused by Earth’s motion about the Sun, causing the radiant to appear to “drift” with respect to the background stars. (Danielle Moser, NASA Meteoroid Environment Office)

The Perseids appear to radiate from a point in the constellation Perseus, and each meteor has a similar orbit. Meteor showers take their name from the location of their point of origin, or what is known as the radiant.

A Space Shuttle being wheeled out with people standing in the foreground. On June 1, 1993, the orbiter Discovery is shown here being rolled into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for mating with the external tank and twin solid rocket boosters. At the time, Discovery was being prepared for mission STS-51, targeted for a mid-July liftoff. (NASA/JSC)

Fun fact:

The Perseid meteor shower is the only meteor shower to delay a Space Shuttle launch. In 1993, the NASA – STS-51 launch was delayed due to concerns about the Perseid meteor shower activity being forecast to be extremely heavy, increasing the chance that a spacecraft in Earth orbit could be damaged by a piece of the debris.

By Lauren Perkins
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center

Edit for linky:

Uncategorized – Watch the Skies

blogs.nasa.gov blogs.nasa.gov
 
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cybrguy

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
More reasons tonights shower should be a good one, weather allowing...

The Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak this weekend, according to the American Meteor Society. During that window on August 12 and 13, the waning crescent moon will be only 10% illuminated, according to EarthSky.

“With a 10% illuminated waning crescent moon, that means any moonlight we do get will be less and not drown out the fainter stars,” said Dr. Shannon Schmoll, director of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University, in an email. “It also won’t rise until almost 4am (ET), meaning you have some time to view the meteor shower without any moonlight interfering.”
 
NYC_Frank

NYC_Frank

"A man with no vices is a man with no virtues"
Screenshot-20230818-075124-Reddit.jpg
 
florduh

florduh

Well-Known Member
T

Trajectory.

Active Member
CANtalk said:
A map of our Milky Way galaxy
6876f0oj3ckb1.jpg


:peace: :leaf:
Click to expand...

This is only our galaxy.

Look up at the Pleiades at night, and how far away that looks. Then look at this map, and how utterly close that is to the sun. Imagine how much further you'd have to travel to leave our galaxy and become intergalactic.

Voyager 1 is nowhere near the Plaiades, and has only left our solar system to become interstellar in 2012, moving at 38,026 mph. That took 35 years.

Calculate how much longer it would take to leave the Milky Way, and become an intergalactic traveller. Then, how many galaxies are in the known universe.

Want to sign up to join a starship?*


*Above post inspired by Blue Dream.
 
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T

Trajectory.

Active Member
If you still want to get nerdy, when the Voyager 1 finally leaves the Milky Way galaxy, it will take it another 44.1 billion years to reach Andromeda.

To put that in perspective, the universe is only 13.8 billion years old. So it would Voyager 1 three times longer than the universe is old to reach the next galaxy.

Still want to get on that starship?
 
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