I just saw the moon

Bologna

(zombie) Woof.
Sorry, my brain combined your two posts. It's a little mushy these days.

I didn't know that coronal ejections were predictable. I thought they were more random, like solar flares.
I don't know that they are, but how (or when, rather) "they interact with our magnetosphere" is....:tup:
 
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Bologna

(zombie) Woof.
A season then, when they're more likely.
Yeah. but I would say "...more visibly active"... or something like that...? Either way, I remember seeing them as a little kid in Wellesley, MA... which was certainly rare even back then, and all but virtually impossible now with all the added light pollution etc...saw 'em in Maine and Canadialand, too, but that was eons ago.
 
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NYC_Frank

"A man with no vices is a man with no virtues"
NGC2070 Tarántula Nébula in the Large Megallenic Cloud

James Webb telescope #NASA #ESA #JWST

20240205-072727.jpg
 

CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
ESO is celebrating! Getting closer!

Next stop, Paranal
The first 18 main mirror segments of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) have now safely travelled from Europe to South America, covering more than 10,000 km.


Unloading the first shipment of the ELT main mirror segments


ELT mirror segments as far as the eye can see


The moment of truth
Due to the sheer size and fragility of the mirror segments —each mirror is five centimetres thick, 1.5 meters wide and shaped to nanometre accuracy— they were each shipped in a private, protective cocoon. Each box was equipped with humidity, temperature and shock sensors to track the internal conditions during the long journey. When loaded into the transport vehicles, the boxes were cushioned by air bags. Upon arrival at the technical facility, the segments were carefully inspected to ensure they hadn’t been damaged during delivery.
With the first segments safely stored at Paranal, the ELT is coming ever closer to its first light. More than 100 segments have already left the production line and are being checked by ESO engineers before they can be shipped to Chile.


ESO engineers inspect an M1 segment...remember, 798 segments total.
 

vapviking

Old & In the Way
Actually one of my earliest vivid memories was when my dad brought me out into the back yard AT NIGHT, sat me on his shoulders and we watched that tiny dot of light, Sputnik, arc across the sky.
And yeah, the duck and cover drills were a regular thing. We all knew it would be a wasted effort, in the event...

But I know in my heart that today's world is a whole lot scarier place to grow up than back in those Wonder Years.
 

Okla68

Well-Known Member
Actually one of my earliest vivid memories was when my dad brought me out into the back yard AT NIGHT, sat me on his shoulders and we watched that tiny dot of light, Sputnik, arc across the sky.
And yeah, the duck and cover drills were a regular thing. We all knew it would be a wasted effort, in the event...

But I know in my heart that today's world is a whole lot scarier place to grow up than back in those Wonder Years.
The number of Scarier people has increased Exponentially !
October of '57....I was a 1st grade school crossing guard, a 8 mile south of Muskogee country boy moved into the thriving metropolis "Oil Capital of the World" TULSA, OKLA. The back window of our pickups rear view partially blocked by a Browning Sweet 16, a Remington model 742 30'06 deer rifle, Winchester model 06 pump 22 and a Stephens single barrel .410 shotgun. Vehicles rarely locked at night, garage door left Open most nights(summer).
If the street lights had came on for over 10 minutes you were Late !
In contrast today, Everything is locked down. No longer are hunting weapons adorning the vehicle, but, my belt is accessorized with a Glock G30.
Yep, as Dorothy said, "its sure not Kansas, Toto" !
 
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CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
So after viewing the two videos, as @Okla68 said, if that don't knock you off your high-horse...and it should make you feel humble cuz we ain't shit in the grand scheme of things.
And after watching those two videos, you should read, and take to heart and mind, these words which based on this picture taken by Voyager 1 as it was leaving the Solar System...




Look again at that dot (Earth). That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
-Carl Sagan
 

CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with some 200 other globular star clusters. The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri) as seen from planet Earth, 47 Tuc lies about 13,000 light-years away. It can be spotted with the naked-eye close on the sky to the Small Magellanic Cloud in the constellation of the Toucan. The dense cluster is made up of hundreds of thousands of stars in a volume only about 120 light-years across. Red giant stars on the outskirts of the cluster are easy to pick out as yellowish stars in this sharp telescopic portrait. Tightly packed globular cluster 47 Tuc is also home to a star with the closest known orbit around a black hole.


Planetary nebulae like Heckathorn-Fesen-Gull 1 (HFG1) and Abell 6 in the constellation Cassiopeia are remnants from the last phase of a medium sized star like our Sun. In spite of their shapes, planetary nebulae have nothing in common with actual planets. Located in the bottom left part of the featured photo, HFG1 was created by the binary star system V664 Cas, which consists of a white dwarf star and a red giant star. Both stars orbit their center of mass over about half an Earth day. Traveling with the entire nebula at a speed about 300 times faster than the fastest train on Earth, V664 Cas generates a bluish arc shaped shock wave. The wave interacts most strongly with the surrounding interstellar medium in the areas where the arc is brightest. After roughly 10,000 years, planetary nebulae become invisible due to a lack of ultraviolet light being emitted by the stars that create them. Displaying beautiful shapes and structures, planetary nebulae are highly desired objects for astrophotographers.


Not all roses are red of course, but they can still be very pretty. Likewise, the beautiful Rosette Nebula and other star forming regions are often shown in astronomical images with a predominately red hue, in part because the dominant emission in the nebula is from hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen's strongest optical emission line, known as H-alpha, is in the red region of the spectrum. But the beauty of an emission nebula need not be appreciated in red light alone. Other atoms in the nebula are also excited by energetic starlight and produce narrow emission lines as well. In this close-up view of the Rosette Nebula, narrowband images are mapped into broadband colors to show emission from Sulfur atoms in red, Hydrogen in green, and Oxygen in blue. In fact, the scheme of mapping these narrow atomic emission lines (SHO) into the broader colors (RGB) is adopted in many Hubble images of emission nebulae. This image spans about 50 light-years across the center of the Rosette Nebula. The nebula lies some 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros.


Can you find the Rosette Nebula? The large, red, and flowery-looking nebula on the upper left may seem the obvious choice, but that is actually just diffuse hydrogen emission surrounding the Cone and Fox Fur Nebulas. The famous Rosette Nebula is really located on the lower right and connected to the other nebulas by irregular filaments. Because the featured image of Rosetta's field is so wide and deep, it seems to contain other flowers. Designated NGC 2237, the center of the Rosette nebula is populated by the bright blue stars of open cluster NGC 2244, whose winds and energetic light are evacuating the nebula's center. The Rosette Nebula is about 5,000 light years distant and, just by itself, spans about three times the diameter of a full moon. This flowery field can be found toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).


What's happening in the core of the Carina Nebula? Stars are forming, dying, and leaving an impressive tapestry of dark dusty filaments. The entire Carina Nebula, cataloged as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light years and lies about 8,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. The nebula is composed predominantly of hydrogen gas, which emits the pervasive red and orange glows seen mostly in the center of this highly detailed featured image. The blue glow around the edges is created primarily by a trace amount of glowing oxygen. Young and massive stars located in the nebula's center expel dust when they explode in supernovas. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula's center, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically.
 

Bologna

(zombie) Woof.

CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
Had to post this one...huge image, 14 MB... @cybrguy
My God, it's full of stars!


Hundreds of thousands of stars are contained in this infrared image of Sagittarius C, a region near the center of the Milky Way. Taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this image is helping astronomers unlock a stellar puzzle.
The center of the Milky Way is the most prolific star-forming region in the entire galaxy. However, astronomers have only found a fraction of the young stars they expected here: there is “fossil” evidence that many more stars were born in the recent past than the ones we actually see. This is because looking towards the center of the galaxy is not an easy task: clouds of dust and gas block the light from the stars and obscure the view. Infrared instruments, such as the HAWK-I camera on the VLT, allow astronomers to peer through these clouds and reveal the starry landscape beyond.
In a recent study, Francisco Nogueras Lara, an astronomer at ESO in Germany, analyzed VLT data of Sagittarius C, a region whose chemical composition made it a promising candidate to host recently formed stars. And it delivered: he found that this region was much richer in young stars than other areas in the galactic center. Looking to similar regions, now, is a promising lead to find the other missing young stars.
 

NYC_Frank

"A man with no vices is a man with no virtues"
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Late edit as it brought this scene from the movie "Apollo 13" to mind 🤣

 
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