congrats new horizon team

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Blacky
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by Blacky »

tiemeupalso wrote:jenny said"That's how we found out that Venus was actually hotter than Mercury."
damn right she was.have you seen their statues:)

(sorry i cant help myself)

:rofl: :mrgreen:

Thanks, that one made my day!
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. (W. Blake)
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by bound_jenny »

tiemeupalso wrote:jenny said"That's how we found out that Venus was actually hotter than Mercury."
damn right she was.have you seen their statues:)

(sorry i cant help myself)
Argh.... :facepalm:






In any case, Mercury is too fast to enjoy. :rofl:

Jenny.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by ponylady »

bound_jenny wrote:

In any case, Mercury is too fast to enjoy. :rofl:

Jenny.
ever seen a sunrise on mercury ?

as mercury has a 3/2 bound rotation *another reason why SB-addicts should be space buffs*
there is a spot on mercury's surface where you could watch a sunrise and actually would see the sun going backwards after sometime.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by ponylady »

talking to myself here, it seems.

new images released from the NH team.
they are simply amazing & have greatly expanded our knowledge of this far away world.

among new discoveries:

# atmospheric nitrogen haze layers on pluto.

# pluto has nitrogen-ice based flowing glaciers, similiar to terra's water-based ones.

these images are amazing, so be sure to take a look @ nasa's homepage.

in other space news:

# rosetta observed a distinct jet on ...-gerasimenko (sorry, i'm doing this post from the top of my head) as it is nearing it's perihelion.

# enceladus must have a global liquid water ocean beneath it's surface. that's the only explanation for the slight wobble in his orbit & rotation. makes him the 2nd solarsystem moon with a large amount of water beneath a frozen surface.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

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ponylady wrote:these images are amazing,
That I can vouch for. My favorite is one that looks over the horizon, with the rough mountains on one side, and the smooth ice plains on the other, with the layered haze hanging over it all. I have to say that it's likely the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen in the solar system (though I wouldn't want to go there, it's bloody cold - mind you, I entered my name on the disc they put in the NH probe... so I was there, after a fashion...).

Add to all that the stark contrast between Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. When color contrast is enhanced, Pluto is reddish, while Charon is plain gray. Plus those four other little shards of moons.

Next stop, a Kuiper Belt object they've selected to study on the way out. It's at the right place at the right time. What are we going to see when we get there? Who knows? What's sure is that there will be some questions answered, and certainly far more new questions asked.
ponylady wrote:rosetta observed a distinct jet on ...-gerasimenko (sorry, i'm doing this post from the top of my head) as it is nearing it's perihelion.
Gerasimenko is the easiest part of its name. I just call it "the comet"... They absolutely had to go to a comet with a long Russian name!

What's fascinating is that every one that gets visited is vastly different from the others. Anyone that says that space is boring hasn't been around enough.
ponylady wrote:enceladus must have a global liquid water ocean beneath it's surface.
Not bad for a tiny ice world barely 500 km in diameter. Amazing what a decent gravity massage can do - global subsurface oceans, giant ice geysers laced with organic chemicals (as one scientist put it, there was a big sign with "Free Samples" hanging there, and Cassini obliged).

With all that beauty out there, if someone doesn't experience wonder at the sight of it, their soul is dead.

Going back to reading through the science encyclopedias when I was little, and looking up at the Moon during the Apollo missions and pondering that there are people up there, I still carry that sense of wonder.

Jenny.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

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jenny,dont ever lose that sense of wonder.it is what keeps life worth living.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by ponylady »

in other news: my alarm clock is already set for the lunar eclipse monday morning in central europe. if the skies will stay clear it will be spectacular, since it's a "harvest" full moon.
meaning the moon will be in the perihel of it's orbit.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

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i am actually looking forward to 9pmcdt here in Texas.the skt is suppose to be clear and the moon will be very photographic.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

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It will be about 10 pm EDT Sunday for me. I hope that my usual luck won't apply - as it happens, when there's some kind of interesting astronomical event, like comets, eclipses, etc., its ALWAYS cloudy. The weather folks say it's going to be clear, but they have an annoying habit of not being able to predict anything with any accuracy more than a few hours in advance. :evil:

If the clear skies announced are true, I'll dust off my telescope and try to take pictures.

If not, I'm heading down to the weather office with my whip... :whip:

Jenny.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

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Oh, I will miss the beginning of the eclipse. Will have to try to catch the tail end of it for pictures.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by bound_jenny »

Still looks like clear weather!

Telescope is checked out, drive battery replaced, camera tested on it... Ready to go! 8)

I hope that there won't be trees in the way... There are a lot of them in my street - nice for shade but not so for low elevation sky stuff...

Jenny.
Helplessness is a doorway to the innermost reaches of the soul.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by bound_jenny »

It was a success! Some clouds started moving in from the west, but I managed to snap everything from about 2130 to 2230 EDT - well into totality.

Here's one of the better ones:
IMGP2363A.JPG
Pentax K100D on a Celestron Ultima 8 telescope, focal length 2000 mm ratio F/10. This one's about 1 second exposure, but from start to finish I went from about 1/1000 second down to 8 seconds!

I even caught a couple of stars down to the lower left. Nice. 8)

Jenny.
Helplessness is a doorway to the innermost reaches of the soul.
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Re: congrats new horizon team

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Very, very nice picture. :love:
Looks like the folks at the weather office are relatively safe for now.

My pics are unfortunately not even nearly as good. :cry:
Partially because of worse equipment (300mm focal length on a Sony Alpha 100 is the best I have), plus slight fog and the light pollution of a (fairly) large city. :evil:

None the less it is/was a sight and experience I'll probably never forget.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. (W. Blake)
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by bound_jenny »

I was looking at my photo a little more closely, and noticed that the brighter star below the moon is actually a double star... That's even cooler!
Blacky wrote:Looks like the folks at the weather office are relatively safe for now.
Yup. A couple of weeks ago it was nearly Armageddon for them - they predicted (and insisted on it) a partly sunny day on a Saturday, with rain only moving in for the evening. It started raining in the morning and didn't let up. Even as it rained, they stuck to their forecast. Anyone there think of looking out the window?

Back to things astronomical. NASA has just announced that there is occasional flowing liquid water on Mars. Water is a pretty liberal term here, as it needs to be quite briny to stay liquid for even a short time (the atmospheric pressure there is about 1% of ours, or about the same as 30+ km altitude here). Let's call it lubricated salts...

Pluto continues to amaze, as the photos trickle in from far out in the cold outer reaches of our solar system. It seems to be a much more dynamic place than we expected, despite its small size, the cold temperatures, etc.

Consider that now, less than sixty years after the dawn of the space age, we have explored all the planets (and their moons) of the solar system, and a couple of main belt and near-Earth asteroids, a handful of comets, and more yet to come. And we're moving incrementally closer to finding a planet outside our solar system that could be close to Earthlike. And we're getting closer to finding life out there, even in some of the most unexpected places.

How can one not be awed, how can one not experience wonder before all that?

Jenny.
Helplessness is a doorway to the innermost reaches of the soul.
If my corset isn't tight, it just isn't right!
Kink is the spice of life!
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Re: congrats new horizon team

Post by ponylady »

well, that lunar eclipse wad truly amazing.
clear skies for me and a good laugh, as there were quite a few peeps out there trying to conceal their solareclipse-glasses.

in other news: 1st highres charon images are in, and guess what: more surprises.
did somebody expect anything else ?

too bad new horizons can't reach another one of the larger kuiper belt objects.
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