3,2,1, Blast Off!

[Lily Adams]

Are there any astronomers/astronauts/lovers of the night sky or space, experienced or otherwise? Here's the thread to talk about the incredible beauty of space and the night sky and our exploration of it. (Maybe we can have a debate on the exploration part? ) What's your favorite planet? Star? Galaxy? As for me, I like binary systems. They're neat and interesting to look at. It's been said that we might actually be a binary system, too! Now wouldn't that be somethin'?

What inspired me to start this topic was the launch of the Dawn spacecraft today, which will travel to the asteroid belt and explore.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/main/index.html

I also adore astronomy, and one of my favorite space missions in history are the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts because they explored so much and they are now so far away! Not to mention they have mesages on them for and being that may encounter them! Voyager 1, which is the farthest man-made craft out in space, has entered the heliosheath and is on it's way to outer, OUTER space. And it still is sending transmissions!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program

Oh and has anyone seen the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan? It's a favorite of mine, and I own it.

Woo, I'm getting so pumped up. Who shares one of my passions? The film Contact and Carl Sagan's other work (like Cosmos ) got me all into this stuff when I was around 11 and I've loved it ever since. It'd be neat to actually contact other beings with radio, wouldn't it?

Sorry about my over-enthusiasm, ha ha.

Apologies if there is already a thread on this.

[papayahed]

One of my favorite T-Shirts is the Mercury Seven I got at Kennedy Space Center.

I'd say my favorite mission is the Mars Rover, I stayed home and watched most of the day when that thing landed. It was some holiday and I was suppossed to be somewhere but I showed up really late.

[Shalot]

Astronomy was one of things that I always wanted to take an interest in but never found the time. However, I do love StarDate on NPR. It comes on every day at 9 am and they talk about what's visible in the night sky and give you little facts and tidbits about the stars and galaxies.

And I swear, today (while at work)i think I heard a little news blurb about scientists picking up radio waves from a billion light years away. I am trying to find today's programming to see if i can find a link.

Anyway, I am probably not as well-informed as you are but I love to hear science-made-easy facts and tidbits about it.

[Lily Adams]

One of my favorite T-Shirts is the Mercury Seven I got at Kennedy Space Center.

I'd say my favorite mission is the Mars Rover, I stayed home and watched most of the day when that thing landed. It was some holiday and I was suppossed to be somewhere but I showed up really late.

Oh, neato! I need some kind of astronomy geek shirt, I really do.

Time flies when you become intrigued with something...speaking of Mars, I remember a year ago or so I got really obsessed with the planet Mars, and I remember being really mad that I didn't get into the planet earlier because just a year before that Mars was really close to us and won't be that close in fifty bajillionty years Oh well. I like the names of it's moons, Phobos and Deimos...fear and panic...

Astronomy was one of things that I always wanted to take an interest in but never found the time. However, I do love StarDate on NPR. It comes on every day at 9 am and they talk about what's visible in the night sky and give you little facts and tidbits about the stars and galaxies.

I've never heard of that! :0 I should look it up! I do, however, watch the NASA channel every once and a while to see what's going on with them.

And I swear, today (while at work)i think I heard a little news blurb about scientists picking up radio waves from a billion light years away. I am trying to find today's programming to see if i can find a link.

Are you cereal? CEREALLY?! I'll look it up, too...that is great!

EDIT: Found an article about it! http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...41800120070927

"We think it has got to be some sort of catastrophic event happening in another galaxy -- like two stars colliding and merging or maybe a black hole. Something kind of exotic," she said.

It is, however, unlikely to be the extraterrestrial equivalent of "I Love Lucy" or other radio or television broadcast.

No aliens. Oh well.

Anyway, I am probably not as well-informed as you are but I love to hear science-made-easy facts and tidbits about it.

Don't say that. I'm just a kid...I promise you I would have failed my physics class last year if we weren't graded on a curve. And physics is a major part of astronomy.

But you should see the Cosmos series, then, if you haven't. Science (especially physics and astronomy) made easy.

[Shalot]

Okay, I found it (good to know I wasn't dreaming!)

Here's an excerpt;

Strong Extragalactic Radio Burst Poses a Mystery
by Joe Palca

All Things Considered, September 27, 2007 · Sometimes, what seems like a remarkable scientific discovery turns out to be an error in the data. And other times, it leads to a Nobel Prize. A new research paper in the new edition of the journal Science epitomizes that uncertainty.

Astronomers report seeing an extremely bright, extremely powerful radio burst from far outside of our galaxy. They can't recall seeing anything like it before — and they have no idea what caused it.

The story begins in 2001, when astronomers pointed the Parkes radio telescope in Australia at the Small Magellanic Cloud. The cloud is really a galaxy about 200,000 light years away. The astronomers were looking for pulsars, spinning neutron stars that pour out rhythmic bursts of energy.

After the survey was over, Duncan Lorimer of West Virginia University got hold of the data from the telescope. Just for fun, he started analyzing the data a different way, by screening out signals from relative close-in objects like the pulsars in the Magellanic cloud, and focusing instead on objects much farther away — as far as a billion light years away.

Lorimer asked an undergraduate, David Narkevic, to help him. This past winter, on one of their weekly meetings, Narkevic showed him a graph of data collected on August 24, 2001.

"When he showed me this, you know, it looks, it looks quite interesting," Lorimer said. "And I said, 'Yeah, you bet,' it's very interesting, we've never seen anything like this before."

The graph showed an extremely strong radio signal lasting approximately five thousandths of a second.

"So, we got very excited when we saw that," Lorimer said. "It is so bright, it jumps off the page."

Lorimer scoured the data for any other bursts from the same spot, but there were none. He checked to see if any other telescopes spotted something in that part of the sky at the same time as his radio pulse. Again, nothing.

So he is stuck with one remarkable event. But he predicts that a search through previous radio telescope surveys will turn up more.

"There should be a number of them also present in other archival surveys. And we're currently in the process of looking for those events," Lorimer said.

When asked about the case, Lorimer admits to uncertainty. Still, he said he hopes that "when the results are in-house, that it'll get people thinking about new types of phenomena."

And they have started to do just that. Brad Schaefer is an astronomer at Louisiana State University.

"This could be just a version of something we've already thought of," Schaefer said. "Or it could be something completely new that no one has any idea of what it could be, yet."

Schaefer says this is the kind of thing astronomers live for.

"It could be due to a black hole-neutron star collision," he said. "Or perhaps a neutron star-neutron star collision. Or perhaps even a black hole-black hole collision, far off in a distant galaxy. Well, a billion light years away."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=14778839


Okay, I think i did that right. The moderators will let me know if I didn't.

[papayahed]

Oh, neato! I need some kind of astronomy geek shirt, I really do.

Time flies when you become intrigued with something...speaking of Mars, I remember a year ago or so I got really obsessed with the planet Mars, and I remember being really mad that I didn't get into the planet earlier because just a year before that Mars was really close to us and won't be that close in fifty bajillionty years Oh well. I like the names of it's moons, Phobos and Deimos...fear and panic...

I went to the planetarium to view Mars. They had ~ 10 telescopes set up it was pretty neat until it got close to my turn and Mars went behind some trees..we had to wait about 20 minutes for it to come out the other side.

Have you seen that Tom Hanks documentary From the earth to the moon? I haven't but I've been meaning too....

[Pensive]

Night sky? In summer nights, whenever I slept outside I would look at the sky and count stars. My favourite planet? Well, I like Earth the most but by the sounds of it Plato looks cool too. I mean come on, extreme cold. And I LOVE cold. Freezing cold. Aha, I wish I could visit Plato for once...

[amalia1985]

I made a high-school project once--many years agooooo-about Space.
My favourite planet has always been Venus-seriously, no laughs-I remember watching the little red spot, next to the setting Sun for the first time, when I was carrying the research for that project...

[TheFifthElement]

Oh I love astronomy! I have a telescope which I don't get to use very often because it's big and heavy and it takes aeons to set up. I love looking at the moon through the telescope, because you can see all the craters, and it's so huge that you have to look at it in quarters.

My favourite planet is, of course, Earth (how could you love any planet more than this one?), but next in line is Saturn. We've looked at both Jupiter and Saturn through the telescope and it's just amazing! Saturn was so beautiful with the rings being clearly visible, and it's a lovely shade of pale yellow. Lovely

When my son was born I wanted to give him the name Deimos for his middle name, but my husband wouldn't let me!

Pensive - Pluto isn't considered to be a planet anymore - it was declassified and is now a planetoid. Officially there are only 8 planets now in the Solar system.

[papayahed]

http://www.mentalfloss.com/store/pro...cat=103&page=1:

[Starving Buddha]

What I find most interesting is the mirror reflection of outer space with inner space. Planetary orbits are analogous to electrons orbiting around an atomic nucleus. Above as below, on earth as it is in heaven. One day I had a little mini-epiphany: I saw the act of conception (sperm fertilizing egg) as analogous to a meteor carrying cosmic molecules (componants of life) plunging into the primordial sea of the ovum (earth) as anolgous to the seed that existed before the big bang, which was fertilized by some divine spark... It's all the same

[Lily Adams]

Have you seen that Tom Hanks documentary From the earth to the moon? I haven't but I've been meaning too....

I think I've seen bits and pieces of it, but not the whole thing.

When my son was born I wanted to give him the name Deimos for his middle name, but my husband wouldn't let me!

Hey, you're that neat FSM person...what are you called now? FSMians? XD
Okay, to the point, whaaaaa? That is a cool middle name! Why not? I'm sorry.


I love that, Papaya.

What I find most interesting is the mirror reflection of outer space with inner space. Planetary orbits are analogous to electrons orbiting around an atomic nucleus. Above as below, on earth as it is in heaven. One day I had a little mini-epiphany: I saw the act of conception (sperm fertilizing egg) as analogous to a meteor carrying cosmic molecules (componants of life) plunging into the primordial sea of the ovum (earth) as anolgous to the seed that existed before the big bang, which was fertilized by some divine spark... It's all the same

There is a theory that atoms are just universes. That's one of the reasons why I love astronomy so much. So many possibilities.

Wow, that is quite an ephiphany! I've never thought of that! Thanks for sharing that, that's a fantastic thought!

[bluevictim]

Speaking of binary systems, my favorite is good ol' Polaris (aka the North Star), which I just read is actually a trinary system. It's always comforting to be able to (approximately) orient myself just by looking up at the night sky. Naturally, the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia are among my favorite constellations (because they are the surest way to find Polaris).

One day I had a little mini-epiphany: I saw the act of conception (sperm fertilizing egg) as analogous to a meteor carrying cosmic molecules (componants of life) plunging into the primordial sea of the ovum (earth) as anolgous to the seed that existed before the big bang, which was fertilized by some divine spark... It's all the same

You're not alone in finding inspiration in this analogy. A father heaven inseminating a mother earth is a theme common to many mythologies.

[Starving Buddha]

Speaking of binary systems, my favorite is good ol' Polaris (aka the North Star), which I just read is actually a trinary system. It's always comforting to be able to (approximately) orient myself just by looking up at the night sky. Naturally, the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia are among my favorite constellations (because they are the surest way to find Polaris).



You're not alone in finding inspiration in this analogy. A father heaven inseminating a mother earth is a theme common to many mythologies.

Years ago I discovered Joseph Campbell... His work above all others inspired me. Mythologies the world over all deal with the same archetypal psymbols. The same psymbols found in dreams. Campbell explained that myths were a collective dream and dreams are a personal myth.

[TheFifthElement]

Hey, you're that neat FSM person...what are you called now? FSMians? XD
Okay, to the point, whaaaaa? That is a cool middle name! Why not? I'm sorry.

Ha ha! We are known as Pastafarians.

It certainly would have been a cool name, but it got vetoed. His middle name is now Patrick - not quite the same although it could be argued that we retained the astronomical theme and named him after Patrick Moore!

I'm glad you started this thread LilyAdams, I so love the stars. My favourite constellation is Orion, when he's marching across the sky you know autumn has set in and we're in for a long cold season in which the nights are cold, crisp and dark - perfect sky watching weather.

Did you get to see the comet Hale-Bopp when it was around? The image of Hale-Bopp is probably permanently imprinted in my mind, I looked at it so often.

Then there was the Solar eclipse in 1999 - which was visible from UK. We went to watch it in Devon, and even though it was cloudy it was still the most wonderful experience, though the 3 hours we spent trying to get out of Devon afterwards wasn't much fun!

Wouldn't we get bored without the sky to look at? Everything about it is amazing!

Have you guys seen this?...

http://www.galaxyzoo.org

you can classify galaxies on the net!!!