Outer Space Thread

[mikechamp]

Feel free to make sophomoric jokes about the headline:

Brightest and hungriest black hole ever detected

The most luminous object ever detected has been spied in the distant Universe. It's a quasar - the bright core of a galaxy that is powered by a gargantuan black hole some 17 billion times the mass of our Sun. Known as J0529-4351, the object's power was confirmed in observations by the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

Scientists, reporting in the journal Nature Astronomy, say the black hole has a voracious appetite, consuming the mass equivalent to one Sun every day. The brightness is described as being equivalent to more than 500 trillion suns. The hot accretion disc producing all that light measures seven light-years in diameter. That's roughly 15,000 times the distance from the Sun to the orbit of Neptune.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68346725

[GeddyWrox]

Gigglesnort

[mikechamp]

Amazing pictures of our Sun:

Stunning photos show the Sun like never before

Award-winning solar astrophotographer Eduardo Schaberger shares his stunning photos of the Sun - and talks about his fascination with our closest star.

Photographing the Sun using a hydrogen-sensitive telescope reveals textures and details invisible to the naked eye: a swirling, volatile world of moving plasma. He has also captured massive solar eruptions that eject plasma 200,000km into space - more than half the distance of the Earth to the Moon.

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0hgsj09 ... ver-before

[thrill]

]Brightest and hungriest black hole ever detected

Scientists have discovered my ex-wife? Welcome to the party, pals.

[Arthur Dent]

Another Starship test this morning, and a spectacular show, per usual. The first stage successfully flew back and did what appeared to be reasonably successful simulated landing on the ocean not far from the pad. Upper stage reentry featured insane live footage of glowing plasma surrounding the vehicle including the below of it tearing apart a flap. Remarkably, after all this, the engines restarted to do a successful soft landing of some kind in the Indian Ocean. I don't know whether this thing will deliver near its promises, but it seems to be coming along, and if they want to throw vast sums at the program, it's a great show. What a beast.

[CardsofSTL]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... s-science/

After more than three decades of revolutionary cosmic discovery, the Hubble Space Telescope is getting a new spin on its operations—and entering what may be the twilight of its epochal mission.

Hubble is still in good health as it orbits at 17,000 miles per hour some 320 miles above Earth, NASA says, but the observatory has been in “safe mode” since May 24. This is only the latest in an increasingly regular series of safe-mode events that have suspended the telescope’s science operations. Most of these recent disruptions have been linked to faulty readings from a glitchy gyroscope, or gyro, a device that uses the angular momentum of a fast-spinning wheel to measure the speed and motion of Hubble’s turns as it tracks targets across the sky. Ground controllers have repeatedly reset the troublesome gyro, only for the erroneous readings to soon reappear.

Hubble carries six gyros, all installed in 2009 during the last space shuttle mission to service the telescope. Including the problematic gyro, only three of the six remain active. Normally all of these three gyros work in tandem to efficiently and precisely steer and point the telescope.

But a new “normal” is now at hand. During a press conference on June 4, NASA officials announced that the space agency is transitioning Hubble to “one-gyro mode,” a contingency plan for continuing science operations despite the telescope’s dwindling number of usable gyros. The transition will leave Hubble with a single fully functional gyro held in reserve and will require the reconfiguration both the spacecraft and ground control, as well as revised plans for all scientific observations. But the telescope should be back in action by mid-June, officials say.

Kind of a long article but I found it interesting.

[GeddyWrox]

Hubble has been so amazing. I will literally sob when it is dies.

[AdmiralKird]

Hubble will likely be serviced for gyros again. They did figure out why the gyros on all spacecraft were likely breaking since 2009 so hopefully the new sets will last a long time. The only reason why they would pass long term on a servicing mission is if Hubble gets a replacement. A light bucket in the visual spectrum is incredibly useful, and with the success of Starship's 4th test today it might make economic sense sooner rather than later to put something up in its place.

[mikechamp]

Apparently, it's great to be alive:

‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ explosion will bring a new star to the night sky

Astronomers are expecting a “new star” to appear in the night sky anytime between now and September in a celestial event that has been years in the making, according to NASA.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” said Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement. “It’ll fuel the next generation of scientists.”

The expected brightening event, known as a nova, will occur in the Milky Way’s Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown constellation, which is located between the Boötes and Hercules constellations. While a supernova is the explosive death of a massive star, a nova refers to the sudden, brief explosion from a collapsed star known as a white dwarf. The dwarf star remains intact, releasing material in a repetitive cycle that can occur for thousands of years.

“There are a few recurrent novae with very short cycles, but typically, we don’t often see a repeated outburst in a human lifetime, and rarely one so relatively close to our own system,” Hounsell said. “It’s incredibly exciting to have this front-row seat.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/once-lifetim ... 52206.html

[GeddyWrox]

That's amazing!