Space and Astronomy Megathread (MERGED)

[Arcturus]

it's hard to grasp how enormous these galaxies are from these pics...

Truth be told.

 

[Super Kal]

and I though the Milky Way was big...

 

[Super Kal]

Hubble Deep Field - Dr. Robert E. Williams, STScI/AURA, NASA
(Dec. 18-28, 1995)

Hubble’s longest exposures are like core samples of the universe, recording galaxies at many different distances. This is one of the deepest core samples ever taken. In the foreground are a few nearby stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The rest of the objects are distant galaxies, extending from a billion to more than 10 billion light-years away.

http://www.floridamuseum.org/downloads/1HubbleDeepField.jpg 1.87 MB (big file)

 

[Concept Name]

all of this reminds me of that movie Sunshine i watched yesterday, it was awesome!


although i hope the sun never dies.

 

[FaT_tONle]

The Sun has another 4 billion years left... maybe more if I am not correct

 

[Super Kal]

lol, good enough for me

 

[Venom'sDad]

Just curious, what was your favorite planet(other than Earth) or object of the universe, when you was younger?

 

[Super Kal]

hmm...

for me, it was the Andromeda Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud.

 

[Apollo]

the wikipedia article on the subject has some cool pictures of what Mars, Venus and the Moon would look like terraformed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming

That is so neat!

 

[Super Kal]

this pic pretty much freaked me out for the day
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070626.html

 

[Superhobo]

all of this reminds me of that movie Sunshine i watched yesterday, it was awesome!


although i hope the sun never dies.

Sunshine was awesome. I loved it.

 

[Super Kal]

havent seen it yet

 

[AhabTheArab]

sunshine leaked on the net yesterday. dvdrip.

 

[Super Kal]

what is it about?

 

[teh Puffy]

The sun is dying, and we need heroes to reboost the suns energy or the world as we know will end.

 

[Super Kal]

... riveting...

 

[AhabTheArab]

its actually quite the intense film. some nit picks in the film on the technical aspect, but nothing big, highly recommended.

 

[Superhobo]

I don't wanna spoil it for anyone, but the endings quite sad. My brother thought it was sort of a cop-out. But, whatever.

 

[redmarvel]

Total Lunar Eclipse of August 28

The penumbral phase of August's eclipse begins at about 07:54 UT, but most observers will not be able to visually detect the shadow until about 08:30 UT. A timetable for the major phases of the eclipse is listed below.

Penumbral Eclipse Begins: 07:53:39 UT
Partial Eclipse Begins: 08:51:16 UT
Total Eclipse Begins: 09:52:22 UT
Greatest Eclipse: 10:37:22 UT
Total Eclipse Ends: 11:22:24 UT
Partial Eclipse Ends: 12:23:30 UT
Penumbral Eclipse Ends: 13:21:01 UT

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/OH/OH2007.html

 

[Arcturus]

^

Awesome, can't wait to view the eclipse.

 

[Ice-man]

I was sooo pissed, i was dragged on a vaca with my parents, and the only good part about it the sky was dark and clear enough to see the meteor shower, but on the night it was supposed to happen, large rain clouds got in my view and i missed it.


did anyone catch it?

 

[Super Kal]

astronomical bump

http://earth.google.com/sky/skyedu.html

 

[Mike_D202]

NASA spacecraft finds possible Mars caves

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An orbiting spacecraft has found evidence of what look like seven caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano, the space agency NASA said on Friday.

The Mars Odyssey spacecraft has sent back images of very dark, nearly circular features that appear to be openings to underground spaces.

"They are cooler than the surrounding surface in the day and warmer at night," said Glen Cushing of the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Team and Northern Arizona University.

"Their thermal behavior is not as steady as large caves on Earth that often maintain a fairly constant temperature, but it is consistent with these being deep holes in the ground."

The holes, which the researchers have nicknamed the "Seven Sisters," are at some of the highest altitudes on the planet, on a volcano named Arsia Mons near Mars' tallest mountain, the researchers report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"Whether these are just deep vertical shafts or openings into spacious caverns, they are entries to the subsurface of Mars," said USGS researcher Tim Titus.

"Somewhere on Mars, caves might provide a protected niche for past or current life, or shelter for humans in the future."

But not these caves.

"These are at such extreme altitude, they are poor candidates either for use as human habitation or for having microbial life," Cushing said. "Even if life has ever existed on Mars, it may not have migrated to this height."

Wasn't there a theory that said that UFOs could use underground caverns and tunnles to live on mars??

 

[redmarvel]

Google is offering a $30 million prize to anyone who can get a rover to the moon and send back pictures to them.

calls upon teams to create autonomous rovers that could land on the moon, travel at least three-tenths of a mile (500 meters) and send video, images and data back to Earth.

The first team to succeed would win $20 million - that is, if the job is done by 2012. After that, the prize drops to $15 million, and if no one is successful by the end of 2014, the money could be withdrawn. If a second team succeeds before the deadline, $5 million would be given as a runner-up prize. Another $5 million would be reserved for bonus tasks - for example, roving for longer distances, taking pictures of old lunar spacecraft, finding water ice or surviving the long lunar night.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/09/13/358739.aspx

 

[FaT_tONle]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070924/ts_alt_afp/spaceconferenceindiausmars_070924135921

Nasa eyeing return men on Mars by 2037