Outer Space Thread

[Arthur Dent]

This is truly a remarkable artifact.

Yes, it is Musk tweet, so normally I could not be less interested, but some people actually clicked and, omg.

In addition to the obvious, notable what he contributes to the discussion and that everyone else seems to totally ignore him.

Perhaps he needs to be hit with a return to office mandate.

[GeddyWrox]

This sounds pretty amazing. I hope it's actually feasible!

[Jocephus]

should be able to see venus and saturn tonight (1/30) and tomorrow (1/31)

[mikechamp]

Heads up... in 7 years... maybe...

NASA spotted a big asteroid that may hit Earth — what you should know

It's actually good news that NASA spotted a sizable asteroid with a (small) chance of hitting Earth in 2032. It means our asteroid-sleuthing telescopes are working. "These things come through on a regular basis," Jason Steffen, an astronomer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Mashable. "The fact that we're seeing something around a decade into the future shows the improved technology that's been deployed to watch for these asteroids."

The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System — a global network of telescopes funded by NASA to find Earth-threatening objects — spotted the asteroid 2024 YR4 in December 2024. Early observations of the asteroid's behavior and trajectory show it has a 1.4 percent chance of an Earth impact in the year 2032 (as of Jan. 30, 2025). The number you might not hear is the asteroid also has a 98.6 percent chance of missing our planet.

The impact prediction will change because astronomers don't yet have an accurate enough grasp of the asteroid's characteristics nor location. "If you want to make predictions about where it'll be in the future, you have to know its location conditions very well," explained Steffen. "A few meters off is a lot."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo ... r-AA1yaCrt

[GeddyWrox]

WHOA

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubbl ... ine-rings/

LEDA 1313424, aptly nicknamed the Bullseye, is two and a half times the size of our Milky Way and has nine rings — six more than any other known galaxy. High-resolution imagery from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope confirmed eight rings, and data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii confirmed a ninth. Hubble and Keck also confirmed which galaxy dove through the Bullseye, creating these rings: the blue dwarf galaxy that sits to its immediate center-left.
NASA, ESA, Imad Pasha (Yale), Pieter van Dokkum (Yale)

This illustration compares the size of our own Milky Way galaxy to gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424, nicknamed the Bullseye. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years in diameter, and the Bullseye is almost two-and-a-half times larger, at 250,000 light-years across.
NASA, ESA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye! The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow” — a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy — shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed a ninth using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Previous observations of other galaxies show a maximum of two or three rings.

“This was a serendipitous discovery,” said Imad Pasha, the lead researcher and a doctoral student at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “I was looking at a ground-based imaging survey and when I saw a galaxy with several clear rings, I was immediately drawn to it. I had to stop to investigate it.” The team later nicknamed the galaxy the “Bullseye.”

The article contains high res versions of the images I posted, plus some really cool info about the physics confirmed with this find (how the blue dwarf affected the larger galaxy by passing through it.

Sooo freaking cool.

[mikechamp]

What are we going to do if it finally happens?

Turns out, there isn't really a plan.

Aliens Could Be All Around Us—But We’re Totally Unprepared for ‘First Contact’

what happens if—or when—we make actual contact with alien life? Do governments have a plan in place? Based on the picture popular media paints, we might expect that either an alien incursion or discovery of alien life on another planet might spur the government to sweep in, scoop up the best scientists, and simply press-gang them into action. The U.S. has an astronomical defense budget—$840 billion. Surely the U.S. and other major world governments have drawn up preliminary to-do lists in case we encounter extraterrestrial life.

Either the answer is no, or governments aren’t publicizing their plans.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life (SETI) Director Seth Shostak, Ph.D., says he doesn’t think that U.S. government agencies or the military have a plan for possible first contact. And most military spokespeople did not respond to emailed questions about potential responses to extraterrestrial contact. The U.S. Army’s Defense Press Operations commented only briefly on the topic: spokeperson Sue Gough says it is not part of the army’s mission to seek evidence of aliens.

Media commentator and former British Ministry of Defence UFO researcher Nick Pope worries that none of our current, science-driven protocols clearly say what to do if aliens actually arrive—or how to protect ourselves from any risk. “I think you’d need something far more expansive than current protocols. Most of them are only essentially concerned with verifying the signal is alien,” Pope says.

Governments haven’t dedicated energy to creating a first-contact plan, because they would turn first to science advisors anyway. Within the scientific community, first contact protocols do exist, though they are more a set of guidelines than an action plan.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... wtab-en-us

[mikechamp]

"Sunrise on the moon" (sung to the tune of Fly Me to the Moon)...

Sunrise on the moon! Private Blue Ghost lander captures amazing shot after historic lunar touchdown

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander has captured a gorgeous shot of sunrise on the moon as it begins its workday on the lunar surface.

Blue Ghost aced its lunar landing attempt on Sunday (March 2), setting down close to Mons Latreille, a solitary lunar peak in the vast basin Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises") in the northeastern region of the moon's near side.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sunrise-moon ... 00428.html

[mikechamp]

Runaway planet or star on the loose:

James Webb Space Telescope Targets Mysterious, Free-Floating Mass

The James Webb Space Telescope is helping scientists study a strange mass about 20 light-years from Earth. Traveling unpredictably through the cosmos, the mass is thought to be either a rogue planet or a "failed star," also known as a brown dwarf. Only a close examination of the body's atmosphere will determine which it is.

Astronomers first found SIMP 0136 back in 2003 using Sondage Infrarouge de Mouvement Propre (SIMP), a French term that translates to "infrared proper motion survey." This technique uses two telescopes on opposite hemispheres to capture the movement of a cosmic body in infrared. Strangely, SIMP 0136 appeared to be traveling freely and without a central star around which it could orbit. It also spun very quickly, despite being roughly the same size as Jupiter, making a single SIMP 0136 day only 2.4 hours on Earth.

This led astronomers to believe SIMP 0136 was a rogue planet, or a planet that floats freely through space. But there's a chance the mysterious mass could be something else entirely. Brown dwarfs, otherwise known as failed stars, are the result of gas clouds that have collapsed without gaining enough mass to initiate nuclear fusion—an essential step required to become a "true" star. Brown dwarfs have a minimum mass of 13 Jupiter masses (MJ) and SIMP 0136 has 12.7. SIMP 0136 also emits very little light, though these emissions seem to fluctuate, causing astronomers to be unsure about whether it fits within the brown dwarf category.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/james-webb-s ... 00704.html

[GeddyWrox]

"Brown dwarfs have a minimum mass of 13 Jupiter masses"

American scientists will use any unit of measure other than the metric system, AMIRITE????

[CardsofSTL]