Space... the final frontier

[thylvin]

This threat is for all the space junkies. Post links to galaxies viewed by satellites or a research on any particular subject of space. Anything of interest will be good.

I hope this will satisfy some space junkies here

---------- Post added 5th Aug 2011 at 12:41 AM ----------

The Earth may have had two moons



---------- Post added 5th Aug 2011 at 12:48 AM ----------

NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars

NASA - NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars

---------- Post added 5th Aug 2011 at 12:50 AM ----------

Sorry about the first post, but here it is

Earth Had Two Moons That Crashed to Form One, Study Suggests - Yahoo! News

[thylvin]

Scale of Universe - Interactive Scale of the Universe Tool

This is cool, It shows you from the biggest size it is believed the universe is to the smallest measurable size. It includes the actual size of AIDS virus, Human scale and more... quite mind blowing and worth the look!

[theWorldisYours]

I just heard about earth possibly having two moons last night. so cool. Space always get's me thinking

Two pictures I have saved:

Pale Blue Dot

Laser Towards the Center of the Milky Way
Some info I found on a website about this image:

The sky above Paranal on 21 July 2007. Two 8.2-m telescopes of ESO's VLT are seen against the wonderful backdrop of the myriad of stars and dust that makes the Milky Way. A laser beam is coming out of Yepun, aiming at the Galactic Centre. It is used to obtain images that are free from the blurring effect of the atmosphere. On this image, the laser beam looks slightly artificial. This is a side effect due to saturation caused by the long exposure time. Planet Jupiter is seen as the brightest object on the upper right, next to the star Antares. Image taken by ESO astronomer Yuri Beletsky. Posted on: 07 Aug, 2007

[Kerze]

[thylvin]

@theWorldisYours: I love space, the colours and everything, i sometimes wish i had my own super space ship that can travel large distances in secods so I can explore the universe around is!

@Kevin24: wow, that is truly amazing... I guess you will find the following just as amazing and wonderful

Galaxies consuming another galaxy

Scientists have discovered something amazing. Cannibals does not only exist on our planet, but they exist also in space on a super galactic scales. Confused?

The Hubble Space Telescope have caught our neighbouring closest galaxy, the Andromedia Galaxy consuming another galaxy. What happens? Scientist does not have a clear idea of why it is happening. Though through careful research through thousands and thousands of images ever taken of space, scientists have discovered that it is not an uncommon phenomenon.

Previously such images were viewed as the way a galaxy was formed, but through careful rendering, research and speculations, it was discovered that galaxies does consume one another. In most cases its the large more powerful galaxies that consumes the smaller ones. It assimilates the consumed galaxy into it's own, growing bigger and stronger.

Scientists now believe that the black holes inside the Andromedia Galaxy was originated from this galactic disasters, stars colliding as the universal dance of each solar body in the galaxy collides with the newly assimilated larger galaxy. Some photos shows the leftovers of these consumed galaxies, still hanging on the edges of the Andromedia Galaxies. Now it is believed that most of the stellar bodies between galaxies may be the leftovers of such occurrences.

What is now of major concerns to scientists all over the world, is that the Andromedia galaxy, now a known cannibalistic galaxy is moving closer to the Milky Way Galaxy. That is right, it is moving towards us.

Cosmic cannibalising: Images show one galaxy engulfing another - Science, News - The Independent

Here is a clip of a computer generated clip projecting exactly what will happen
‪Galaxys eating each other.avi‬‏ - YouTube

[MyDecember]

The final frontier?

Sorry to get geeky on you but you forgot The ocean, The human body and The atomic world :P The order doesn't matter though. Telescopes are cool though. I like the Hubble.

I think TLC gave a really cool documentary a long time ago, before they went evangy, about living on Jupiter's moons as if they were resorts. It was awesome but I can't find the video.

[thylvin]

Space is actually the final frontier... yes we haven't discovered the deep parts of the ocean, yes almost every one has been in it, and a large group goes in the far deeper areas. Only few have goon even deeper, but due to pressures not deep enough.

On sub atomic scales... we've been going in that level for decades. The universal scale link i gave a little higher up proofs that.

The human body, only the brain is left though. But i do agree there are some parts on our world we haven't really got into, but civilization has been there at some point or another.

As for space, who can say they've been in space? Only a hand full of astronauts,and then that is not much further beyond the moon. yes we do use telescopes and send satellites out, but that's it.

On a different note though... here is a list of the 10 closest solar system to ours.
Top 10 Closest Stars to Our Solar System - Discover the Stars That Are Closest to Earth

[SlickyPants]

Ah, space. Everyone at work believes I'm far too enthusiastic about it.

I don't really have any interesting links to post but I will say that I hope some form of life is discovered beyond the confines of Earth before I die. Even if it is the most primitive of bacterial life it would mean that it is possible for other life to exist elsewhere. I've always been a "believer" that there is some form of life out there somewhere even though it hasn't been discovered yet. It just seems too unlikely that is doesn't exist. We haven't really looked very hard though. I think that if and when life is discovered that it will mark a new epoch in history.

Anyways, I leave you with a digital photo I took of Jupiter and it's four Galilean moons taken on Sept. 13, 2009. It was taken with a cheap point-and-shoot camera mounted on an alt-azimuth tripod and the exposure was roughly 3 seconds if I remember correctly and the ISO setting was as high as the camera would allow to capture as much light as I could which is why it is very grainy/noisy. I didn't really know anything about astrophotography at the time so I was pretty pleased with the result at the time but I'm sure I could probably get some better images with a better camera and mount. A telescope wouldn't hurt either.



The top image is a screen capture from a program called Stellarium ( Stellarium ) which renders what the sky will look like on any given time/location and the bottom image is from the camera.

[Zontar]

What the hell did these morons in Washington do to our space program?

Obama guts Constellation and hands it off to a bunch of companies that will just go bankrupt like every other private space venture. Congress kills the James Webb Space Telescope while putting aside what we could have spent on it to kill more people in more foreign countries.

If we went back forty years and told America that we were hitching rides into space from the Russians, they'd blow a gasket. The US ain't on the top of shit anymore. I hope you like your Moon with hammers and sickles all over it.

[thylvin]

@Zontar... I actually read a book called Titan... and you know what, they kinda predicted the US would canned the whole space program (it was a book about a mission to Titan, which the Cassini project detected that there is oxygen there but beyond freezing point... actually a rather good read.)

as for life out there... here is your proof

Bacteria from Mars found inside ancient meteorite - Telegraph

Here is a more in depth article about it:

MarsNews.com :: Life on Mars?

I hope this satisfy your fancy... as for me, I strongly believe there are life on other planets, probably not what we would expect, but it is out there. Take for instance... there are for argument's sake just 5 billion suns in the universe and say on average 2 percent of them has a planet similar to ours, that would make 25 million similar planets to earth... i think the numbers speak for themselves... as I would always say it...

It's a pretty big ass universe, it would be a shame if we are the only ones in it!

[SlickyPants]

It certainly is an interesting notion that ALH84001 might contain the fossilized remains of bacterial life. I remain skeptical because it is only one sample and there is always a possibility of earthly contamination or that the formations merely look like bacterial fossils but were formed in some completely different manner but it certainly is an exciting prospect and I would like to believe it is true.

[thylvin]

@SlickyPants... here is something that you also might find interesting

Water found on Mars!
Scientists Discover Rare Flowing Water on Mars, Supports Alien Life - International Business Times

---------- Post added 7th Aug 2011 at 11:12 PM ----------

I believe that this supports the fact that ALH84001 did contain life and it might have come from this region in Mars

[SlickyPants]

That particular news site seems to have sensationalized and distorted the story a wee bit. Flowing water was not discovered on Mars and it has not been proven that the planet supports alien life.

The NASA link in your original post which is the source of the news article only mentions that "Observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possibleflowing water during the warmest months on Mars."

Also from the NASA/JPL press release:

The images show flows lengthen and darken on rocky equator-facing slopes from late spring to early fall. The seasonality, latitude distribution and brightness changes suggest a volatile material is involved, but there is no direct detection of one. The settings are too warm for carbon-dioxide frost and, at some sites, too cold for pure water. This suggests the action of brines, which have lower freezing points. Salt deposits over much of Mars indicate brines were abundant in Mars' past. These recent observations suggest brines still may form near the surface today in limited times and places.

When researchers checked flow-marked slopes with the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), no sign of water appeared. The features may quickly dry on the surface or could be shallow subsurface flows.

"The flows are not dark because of being wet," McEwen said. "They are dark for some other reason."

A flow initiated by briny water could rearrange grains or change surface roughness in a way that darkens the appearance. How the features brighten again when temperatures drop is harder to explain.

"It's a mystery now, but I think it's a solvable mystery with further observations and laboratory experiments," McEwen said.

Hypotheses are not fact, only educated guesses. As cool and interesting as I think this discovery is I think it is one more mystery about the Red Planet that requires further analysis and study.

[Z3ni]

Originally Posted by thylvin

@SlickyPants... here is something that you also might find interesting

Water found on Mars!
Scientists Discover Rare Flowing Water on Mars, Supports Alien Life - International Business Times

---------- Post added 7th Aug 2011 at 11:12 PM ----------

I believe that this supports the fact that ALH84001 did contain life and it might have come from this region in Mars

You know I seen recently on the news they started to show theres structures on mars, but so many people knew that a long time ago, its even on youtube

[Steve712]

Originally Posted by thylvin

Scale of Universe - Interactive Scale of the Universe Tool

This is cool, It shows you from the biggest size it is believed the universe is to the smallest measurable size. It includes the actual size of AIDS virus, Human scale and more... quite mind blowing and worth the look!

Thanks for this! Very cool.

[thylvin]

@SlickyPants: I think the only way we will be able to prove it one way or another is by going there ourselves. Fortunately NASA was working on it before the economical crisis. Whether they are still going ahead or not remains to be seen.

Manned mission to Mars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/382362main_4...1.mars2019.pdf
This is a report by NASA on the Manned mission to Mars

How ever checking NASA's website today, there is no more mention of sending anyone to Mars at all. Was this a hoax? or was this due to budget cuts by Obama? Or was this due to the discontinuation of the Shuttle Program? We may never know.

However, there is another mission planned... to send a bigger better bloody rover... what will that proof? is the previous one damaged? or is this the replacement?
Mars Exploration Program: Mars 2018 Mission

In the end though, without sending an actual person, we might never know if any thing is real or not, if its just the way rocks formed and erosion cut away that makes things look like a civilisation existed before.

@Z3ni: Yes that's right, remember the famous "Mars Face"?

Well general speculations stand that either an advanced species lived on Mars that was more or less humanoid or it could be just the shadow effects of a strangely shaped mountain. My question how ever is, if it was an advanced species, why did they abandon the planet in the first place? If the planet dried up, why not harvest frozen H2O in a nearby field or even from Earth or Jupiter's moon Titan? Why did they let the planet dry up in the first place, could they not have down something? Or was it, Gosh for bid, that they fought amongst each other pretty much like we do and ended up wiping the entire planet's life and everything on the surface. Again as I said to SlickyPants, these questions can only be answered if we actually send in people instead of a little robot that ain't capable of much accept sampling small little items.

@Steve721: Yeah it is cool, i thought you guys might like it, and who knows, a cool science project for college? hehehehe

[XXReye]

I'm very sad that there will be no more shuttles into space...every so often, I got the inkling to be an astronaut. If Star Fleet Academy existed, I might actually get a career :P
Obviously I'm a sci-fi nerd, and so space is a very exciting idea for me. I hope one day we WILL be able to travel space the way they do in sci-fi shows.

This site always causes me amazement:
How Many People Are In Space Right Now?
At the time that I posted this, 6 people were in space!

[thylvin]

@XXReye... cool like i love it. Thanx for sharing that one.

As about when humans will go into space (and you getting a job in Star Fleet Academy) here is something that might be of interest.

If left to governments the entire space programs will just gather dust, mothballs and rust. but thankfully private corporations are into space flight.

Here is a list of the private corporations that is busy developing space flight capabilities:
List of private spaceflight companies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following is a list of 5 companies that are much closer to sending people into space
6 Private Companies That Could Launch Humans Into Space | Space.com

And this one (XXReye is for you... it might not be Star Fleet Acadamy, but it is the next best thing we have currently) SpaceX - Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

[thylvin]

Originally Posted by Concretehands

Image

Did you notice that the blue looks like a hand trying to reach to the warm red lights?