The Space Thread

Might as well make this the Space X thread instead.

Meant to post about this earlier in the week but the day of is still better than nothing. While the mission itself is a simple resupply, they will be trying for a full recovery of the Falcon 9's first stage again, which is something I've been hoping to see for many months now.

Stream will be up in a couple hours.

T-Minus 7 minutes.


EDIT: ... Nevermind.

<iframe src="https://vine.co/v/euEpIVegiIx/embed/simple" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script src="https://platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js"></script>

 

https://v.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/7A1A091C561199927551154683904_3a5cd1574e0...

 

Fuck if I know how to embed Vine. Just click the link; thanks auto embed.

Almost that time again...

http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

T-Minus 4 hrs and 38 mins. Third time is a charm?

Cast is live now. T-Minus 18 minutes.

EDIT: Wow. Bummer. Like, big bummer. Did not expect to catch that. This landing continues to evade me.


yeah that sucks :\

It does suck.  I'm thankful that the debris is contained to the ocean and that the anomaly didn't occur until about 3 minutes into the flight. The thought of the debris/fuel raining down on my hometown and that of my friends and family isn't one I like to entertain, personally. Those I've spoken to said who watched the launch from their backyards said that their view was obstructed during the failure, and simply never saw it come back out from behind the clouds.

Pretty much the worst birthday present for Elon, unfortunately. SpaceX will continue chugging along though. You don't go into the space industry unless you can thrive and learn from failure.

Did not know it was his birthday, dude knows how to blow out his candles.

Seems like the issue has already been identified and is now being addressed. I swear though, when this fucking thing lands on that barge I'm spraying champagne all over the walls and right at my monitor while screaming fanatically.
You and me both. I'm just glad that SpaceX is taking the risks needed to push the industry forward.

Getting pretty stoked for the New Horizons Pluto fly-by.

Rip to the ISS supplies and all that money. Wish all this was more funded. If my generation shows commitment, I'd love to see a bright future for these programs.

edit: no offence, but I'm getting sick of all this military spending.

in other news i finally calibrated my viewfinder scope on my telescope and looked at a star for the first time today. my main goal is to see saturns rings with my naked eye, because i think the fact i can do that is mind blowing.  the scope i have isnt too fancy or anything but its not bad for its price (~$150)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqTkchSHO_4

in other news i finally calibrated my viewfinder scope on my telescope and looked at a star for the first time today. my main goal is to see saturns rings with my naked eye, because i think the fact i can do that is mind blowing.  the scope i have isnt too fancy or anything but its not bad for its price (~$150)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqTkchSHO_4

 

Glad to see another astronomer on the forum. Let me know if you ever need any help with getting the most out of it.

I bought my dream telescope last year. It's a Celestron 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain with AdvancedVX Computerized mount. I'll try to find a pic of it. Haven't purchased a DSLR/CCD for it yet but am planning on doing so in the next month or two. If anyone is ever in the southeast/Atlanta area and would like to go stargazing with my setup, I'd be glad to take you out. Pictures taken by others with my model scope and a DSLR setup are below:

Sorry for the double-post, but here's my scope with a family member's DSLR attached:

thats fucking sick dude, i never knew telescopes could be this powerful/affordable until i looked into them a couple months ago. once i saw the quality you could get with only a hundred or two bucks i went out and got one of those. was kind of an impulse buy at first, was mid winter in michigan and way too cold for me to stand outside trying to learn it by myself. now that its warm out and ive watched/read some info on how to use these things though im definitely going to start using it a bunch. looking at the cosmos with your naked eye is one of the most interesting things i think you could possibly do..

 

btw whats that last pic you posted? first things i could think of was 2 galaxys merging or one getting sucked into a black hole.

Thanks man. Definitely enjoy your scope, but I have to recommend putting a little away each month for an advanced scope. They're a couple thousand, but will last a lifetime with proper care/maintenance, and the ability to view deep space objects like galaxies and distant nebulae is priceless, IMO.

That's M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy). One of my favorite DSOs to show people who accompany me on stargazing trips. It has a satellite galaxy that is interacting with it and was the recent home of a supernova back in 05-06, I believe.

videos/pics like these really show how unfathomably big the universe is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

bottom pic is the hubble ultra deep field, a tiny tiny portion of the sky they zoomed in on and took a pic with super long exposure. for reference of how small of a portion of the sky this pic was taken in, the wikipedia page says: "This is approximately one tenth of the angular diameter of a full moon viewed from Earth, smaller than a 1 mm by 1 mm square of paper held at 1 meter away, and equal to roughly one thirteen-millionth of the total area of the sky."

People who poke fun at astronomers and space-enthusiasts are wastes of a good mind. People who just don't get the bigger picture, shake their head at it, and call it impossible make up this world. And it's really pathetic. 

Sure, there are going to be some crazy ideas, but so was getting a 165k lb machine into space.

People who poke fun at astronomers and space-enthusiasts are wastes of a good mind. People who just don't get the bigger picture, shake their head at it, and call it impossible make up this world. And it's really pathetic. 

Sure, there are going to be some crazy ideas, but so was getting a 165k lb machine into space.

 

In my experience, interest in astronomy/astrophysics has been a fantastic litmus test for how meaningful a friendship is going to be for me. I might be biased though, growing up in Cape Canaveral. Don't get me wrong, it's not fool-proof and it's not something you can or should base your total judgment of a person on, but if I take you out with my scope and a couple beers and show you Saturn with its rings and about 8-16 moons orbiting it - knowing that those moons are about the size of Mercury/Mars - and the person is not blown away or at least intellectually stimulated to the point that all these questions start forming in their mind, I rarely form as deep or as meaningful a relationship with that person as I do with those who get "the itch."

Also the ladies tend to love it, not going to lie.

i can tell what you mean by this, reading this i was thinking back and i too have a correlation with keeping friends around longer the smarter/more interesting conversations we can have. some people can be fun as hell to be around but if i cant sit down and talk to you about real life topics in between the fun i usually find a reason to not like you.

For those who haven't seen it, here's my favorite timelapse which also introduced me to the genius that is Ludovico Einaudi.

MAKE SURE TO WATCH IN THE HIGHEST RESOLUTION

https://vimeo.com/22439234

Enjoy.

 

"Now we're going to explore Uranus..."
Bump: Pluto on its way! Well, NH is. Keep watch folks!

The last time we will ever see Pluto's far side (barring any awesome tech advancements).

When will planetoids learn...

Weak pulls capture minimal bitches, only reason Pluto has any is because it is a has-been.  Probe should of went to a real celestial body. 

Yeah, fuck the planet wannabe. What an asshole.

Just missed it by minutes when waking up, but the New Horizon's stream is still up and answering questions for the next hour or so.

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

I was kind of hoping the planet would rotate around and reveal a massive cock.

http://lightyear.fm/

we're pretty far out there..

Follow-up conference on New Horizon's findings....

http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv
So Kepler found another potential Earth-like planet in a habitable zone. Anyone remember the Gliese 581 hype?

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-kepler-mission-discovers-bigger-o...

More briefings on the findings.

http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723

So Kepler found another potential Earth-like planet in a habitual zone. Anyone remember the Gliese 581 hype?

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-kepler-mission-discovers-bigger-o...

More briefings on the findings.

http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723

Time for seti to point their shit at it..Like they did on Gliese...

Where is that?