I just saw the moon

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Its a shame because it would've gone on a Falcon Heavy...always love the tandem landings!
For anyone who may have missed that joy...
And on April 11th 2019, they landed all 3 including the core booster that landed on the drone ship.

But the booster landing have not all been a success. If we go back a little in time...
 
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CrazyDiamond

Crosseyed & Painless
No one's got it on the first try throughout history, lol. Real shocker is that if the last test of the original Falcon1 rocket had failed (there were four tests scheduled) there would have been no SpaceX...fourth try was the charm and we do have SpaceX...THANKFULLY!!!!
And then there is the story of that fourth rocket almost not making it to the test launch...
 

CrazyDiamond

Crosseyed & Painless
The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright emission nebula. Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will surely alter its appearance. The emission nebula's orange color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen atoms. Toward the lower left of the image is the Flame Nebula, an orange-tinged nebula that also contains intricate filaments of dark dust. Two prominent reflection nebulas are visible: round IC 432 on the far left, and blue NGC 2023 just to the lower left of the Horsehead nebula. Each glows primarily by reflecting the light of their central star.
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Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, obscuring clouds are part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant. It is also listed as Barnard 150 (B150), one of 182 dark markings of the sky cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard. Packs of low mass stars are forming within, but their collapsing cores are only visible at long infrared wavelengths. Still, the colorful stars of Cepheus add to this pretty, galactic skyscape.
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Sorry it's not a larger image...To some it looks like a cat's eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch shell. It is actually one of brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the outer circular concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. The formation of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures, however, is not well understood. The featured image is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image with X-ray light captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The exquisite floating space statue spans over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye, humanity may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.
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NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud. This telescopic close-up spans about two full moons on the sky or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333. It shows details of the dusty region along with telltale hints of contrasty red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago.
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The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems. As for the view from planet Earth, this sharp image shows off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 4 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for establishing the distance scale of the Universe.
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Why doesn't the nearby galaxy create a gravitational lensing effect on the background galaxy? It does, but since both galaxies are so nearby, the angular shift is much smaller than the angular sizes of the galaxies themselves. The featured Hubble image of NGC 3314 shows two large spiral galaxies which happen to line up exactly. The foreground spiral NGC 3314a appears nearly face-on with its pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters. Against the glow of the background galaxy NGC 3314b, though, dark swirling lanes of interstellar dust can also be seen tracing the nearer spiral's structure. Both galaxies appear on the edge of the Hydra Cluster of Galaxies, a cluster that is about 200 million light years away. Gravitational lens distortions are much easier to see when the lensing galaxy is smaller and further away. Then, the background galaxy may even be distorted into a ring around the nearer. Fast gravitational lens flashes due to stars in the foreground galaxy momentarily magnifying the light from stars in the background galaxy might one day be visible in future observing campaigns with high-resolution telescopes.
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In visible light the stars have been removed from this narrow-band image of NGC 281, a star forming region some 10,000 light-years away toward the constellation Cassiopeia. Stars were digitally added back to the resulting starless image though. But instead of using visible light image data, the stars were added with X-ray data (in purple) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared data (in red) from the Spitzer Space Telescope. The merged multiwavelength view reveals a multitude of stars in the region's embedded star cluster IC 1590. The young stars are normally hidden in visible light images by the natal cloud's gas and obscuring dust. Also known to backyard astro-imagers as the Pacman Nebula for its overall appearance in visible light, NGC 281 is about 80 light-years across.
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Why, sometimes, does part of the Sun's atmosphere leap into space? The reason lies in changing magnetic fields that thread through the Sun's surface. Regions of strong surface magnetism, known as active regions, are usually marked by dark sunspots. Active regions can channel charged gas along arching or sweeping magnetic fields -- gas that sometimes falls back, sometimes escapes, and sometimes not only escapes but impacts our Earth. The featured one-hour time-lapse video -- taken with a small telescope in France -- captured an eruptive filament that appeared to leap off the Sun late last month. The filament is huge: for comparison, the size of the Earth is shown on the upper left. Just after the filament lifted off, the Sun emitted a powerful X-class flare while the surface rumbled with a tremendous solar tsunami. A result was a cloud of charged particles that rushed into our Solar System but mostly missed our Earth -- this time. However, enough solar plasma did impact our Earth's magnetosphere to create a few faint auroras.

Many think it is just a myth. Others think it is true but its cause isn't known. Adventurers pride themselves on having seen it. It's a green flash from the Sun. The truth is the green flash does exist and its cause is well understood. Just as the setting Sun disappears completely from view, a last glimmer appears startlingly green. The effect is typically visible only from locations with a low, distant horizon, and lasts just a few seconds. A green flash is also visible for a rising Sun, but takes better timing to spot. A dramatic green flash was caught on video last month as the Sun set beyond the Ligurian Sea from Tuscany, Italy. The second sequence in the featured video shows the green flash in real time, while the first is sped up and the last is in slow motion. The Sun itself does not turn partly green -- the effect is caused by layers of the Earth's atmosphere acting like a prism.
 

Planck

believes in Dog
In which case we would still be depending on Russia to get humans to the ISS? I don't think so...
I'll freely admit I absolutely despise Musk. He is a skilled and clearly dangerous con man. I think, for example, Hyperloop and Hyperloop Las Vegas are comedic gold. Other than providing some laughs they have no affect me. Starlink is another matter entirely and is the main reason for my hope that SpaceX fails. I also believe the world would be a much better place without Musk.

I thought this video was a fair and pretty complete look at Starlink the scam...
 
Planck,
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vapirtoo

Well-Known Member
Just read about this launcher on flipboard.
10 gs before release! David and Goliath type
shit. No humans, just gear and supplies whipped
into orbit.
 
vapirtoo,
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cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Just read about this launcher on flipboard.
10 gs before release! David and Goliath type
shit. No humans, just gear and supplies whipped
into orbit.
If you are talking about that centrifugal launcher I will believe it after they reach orbit.
I'll freely admit I absolutely despise Musk.
You can despise him all you like, but without him we wouldn't yet have a commercial space industry such as we have, an electric car industry that will likely replace IC engines in the next decade or so, and we would be much further behind in rooftop and commercial solar and power storage technology. All these things would have likely occurred eventually, but none of them would likely be viable yet. He pushed all of these things into reality way earlier then they might have occurred without him proving they could be done.

Personally the guy seems like a jerk, and he is seriously arrogant, but I really don't care. Some of the smartest people I know are assholes. He is brilliant and his contributions to our technological world are practically immeasurable. And while I am not confident it will occur, if there is any chance that humans will land on Mars in my lifetime it is totally due to Elon Musk and his accomplishments.

There are lots of arrogant people out there who aren't entitled to the praise they lavish on themselves. I personally don't believe Musk is one of them. Annoying as he may be his ideas and successes have changed the future in dramatic ways that will likely make it better.

And, btw, am I a fan boy? I sure as fuck am and readily admit it... :cool:
 
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Nina

Well-Known Member
Personally the guy seems like a jerk, and he is seriously arrogant, but I really don't care. Some of the smartest people I know are assholes. He is brilliant and his contributions to our technological world are practically immeasurable.
I see your argument but I still cant get past his arrogant jerkiness. There surely are or have been geniuses, mavericks etc who are personable, self effacing, sweet & kind? Or maybe in some cases a difficult personality is an integral part of a particular talent?
 

CrazyDiamond

Crosseyed & Painless
One cannot deny the accomplishments Mr. Musk has made...NASA would never have tried a reusable booster. At least it is spurring competition and making NASA get off their arses and start doing more. We landed on the moon in the late 1960's and we are only this far in 50 years? That's pathetic to me and my tax dollars. For so long there was very little progress...Hubble helped, a million probes to Mars when we should have already been there. At least SpaceX is striving for a lot more than NASA ever has. I could care f'n less whether he's a jerk or not, I don't have to interact with him and neither do you. He's trying new things that others wouldn't. Con man? Really? So what he's trying tunnels...at least he's trying something different than just trying to expand freeways (I lived in San Diego county for over twenty years before coming back to Florida and I-5 was ALWAYS under expansion construction...that's not a solution and a waste of tax dollars). I DO loathe when he talks about crypto and makes the market go bonkers there.
Anyways, 'nuff of that crap, more images...

Why are the regions above sunspots so hot? Sunspots themselves are a bit cooler than the surrounding solar surface because the magnetic fields that create them reduce convective heating. It is therefore unusual that regions overhead -- even much higher up in the Sun's corona -- can be hundreds of times hotter. To help find the cause, NASA directed the Earth-orbiting Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite to point its very sensitive X-ray telescope at the Sun. Featured here is the Sun in ultraviolet light, shown in a red hue as taken by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Superimposed in false-colored green and blue is emission above sunspots detected by NuSTAR in different bands of high-energy X-rays, highlighting regions of extremely high temperature. Clues about the Sun's atmospheric heating mechanisms come from NuSTAR images like this and shed light on solar nanoflares and microflares as brief bursts of energy that may drive the unusual heating.
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Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured exposure, taken from Florida, USA, covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight.
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What created the strange spiral structure on the upper left? No one is sure, although it is likely related to a star in a binary star system entering the planetary nebula phase, when its outer atmosphere is ejected. The huge spiral spans about a third of a light year across and, winding four or five complete turns, has a regularity that is without precedent. Given the expansion rate of the spiral gas, a new layer must appear about every 800 years, a close match to the time it takes for the two stars to orbit each other. The star system that created it is most commonly known as LL Pegasi, but also AFGL 3068 and IRAS 23166+1655. The featured image was taken in near-infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope. Why the spiral glows is itself a mystery, with a leading hypothesis being illumination by light reflected from nearby stars.
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This image shows close-up (left) and wide (right) views of the two bright galactic nuclei, each housing a supermassive black hole, in NGC 7727, a galaxy located 89 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Each nucleus consists of a dense group of stars with a supermassive black hole at its center. The two black holes are on a collision course and form the closest pair of supermassive black holes found to date. It is also the pair with the smallest separation between two supermassive black holes found to date — observed to be just 1600 light-years apart in the sky.
The image on the left was taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile while the one on the right was taken with ESO's VLT Survey Telescope.
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This image shows NGC1850, a cluster of thousands of stars roughly 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a Milky Way neighbor. The reddish filaments surrounding the cluster, made of vast clouds of hydrogen, are believed to be the remnants of supernova explosions.
The image is an overlay of observations conducted in visible light with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The VLT captured the wide field of the image and the filaments, while the central cluster was imaged by the HST.
Among many stars, this cluster is home to a black hole 11 times as massive as the Sun and to a five-solar-mass star orbiting it. By looking at the star’s orbit, a team of astronomers were able to infer the presence of the black hole, making it the first small black hole outside of our galaxy to be found this way. For this discovery, the team used the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the VLT.
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This remarkable image was created from pictures taken by different telescopes in space and on the ground. It shows the thousand-year-old remnant of the brilliant SN 1006 supernova, as seen in radio (red), X-ray (blue) and visible light (yellow).
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This wide-field view captures the evocative and colorful star formation region of the Seagull Nebula, IC 2177, on the borders of the constellations of Monoceros (The Unicorn) and Canis Major (The Great Dog). This view was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
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cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
I see your argument but I still cant get past his arrogant jerkiness. There surely are or have been geniuses, mavericks etc who are personable, self effacing, sweet & kind? Or maybe in some cases a difficult personality is an integral part of a particular talent?
Oh, I'm sure there are. I don't think being an asshole is required to be brilliant. I know some very smart people who are generally decent and personable human beings. But I can imagine that when you spend your career proving to people that you CAN do things that they insist aren't even possible it could have an effect one how you respond to people that may not be a positive one. "I told you so" can be a powerful retort that may not make you a lot of friends...
 

Nina

Well-Known Member
It is true that none of us has to interact with Elon musk however he has a very large platform, lots of young men look up to him, he seems like a hero because he has accomplished amazing things, but he's a bad role model.
I think boys deserve and need better role models and better heroes than Elon musk.
 

Nina

Well-Known Member
thanks Planck, I'll give those a watch😁 (surely Elon isnt just a male version of Elizabeth Holmes? 😶)
 
Nina,
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