About Space Exploration

Anyone interested in Space Exploration here?

Anyone passionate about and interested in the big projects?

Anyone interested in a journey through the Universe?

  • I may get up and drive out to where the sky-glow will be minimal.

  • Thank you Cassandro for that information, I once witnessed   the most amazing spectacle of shooting stars/meteorites whilst on holiday one year.

    I shall definitely be out gazing up at space and wondering about the vast expanse and magnitude of it all.

    I don’t know an awful lot about constellations or planets but it doesn’t mean I can’t look up and enjoy seeing what mankind has wondered at since the start of his kind.

    I too hope the cloud doesn’t get in the way, the Blood Moon was sadly not seen due to cloud.

  • For those interested, the peak of the Perseid meteor shower should be Sunday night to Monday morning (1-3am is usually best). Just like the 'Blood Moon', the English weather may conspire against standing outside and seeing something more than a couple of miles up (as may having to get up in the morning). But maybe not, and there's another chance the following night. Just possible the cloud might hold off tonight too.

  • I learned it was 186282 miles per second and forever after took delight in quoting this number

    Ditto.  Honest. '299 792' never had the same ring and always gets rounded up. (Bit of in-group mimicry there?)

    children's drama series on television on Saturday teatime called Pathfinders in Space

    I must get the DVD. The writer, Malcolm Hulke, went on to reuse the ideas for Doctor Who.

    2001.  Never understood it and never really have but it was such a beautiful experience!

    Co-written by Arthur C Clarke, of course, conceptual inventor of the geostationary satellite. I think the Star Child has multiple interpretations, including that we're in our infancy in exploring the universe.

  • From a very early age I was interested in Space.  I remember my dad taking me in the garden to look at the moon through his binoculars.  And then he said it was a quarter of a million miles away.  Amazing!

    By the age of five, I could name all the major planets in order from the sun - and that was when pluto was a planet.  With Ithis came Holst Planets Suite, the pulsating sound of Mars, the wonderful Jupiter..  Then there were the stars.  I was amazed that the light from the nearest star took four years to reach us.

    I was given a book by Patrick Moore for Christmas - The Boys Book of Space.  It was amazing reading even for a six year old as I was then.  There were tables at the back of the planets, the number of sattelites and the size of them.  A lot of the information may now be thought to be incorrect now, but I memorised those tables.  Then there was another table of the brightest stars and their distance from earth.

    I knew, even at that young age that light travelled at 186000 miles per second (a couple of years later I learned it was 186282 miles per second and forever after took delight in quoting this number.  A light year was approximately 6,000,000,000,000 (which was classed in proper numeracy as six billion miles, a billion properly being a million million and not a thousand million as it appears to have become these days!

    Patrick predicted some events.  The landing of man on the moon he thought would happen in the early twenty first century, and then other predictions for landing on Mars. Around the time I had the Boys Book of Space, there was a children's drama series on television on Saturday teatime called Pathfinders in Space - which went on to three series - Pathfinders to the Moon, Pathfinders to Venus, and Pathfinders to Mars.  Unfortunately the television broke down when one of the astronauts fell down a pit on the moon and saw some strange writing on the wall and it took over fifty years for me to find out what happene next, which I did when the series was released on DVD - and there was a real spine tingling moment when it was revealed where the writing came from!

    When I was in my early teenage years, the defining film came out regarding space travel - 2001.  Never understood it and never really have but it was such a beautiful experience!

    I do take an interest in a lot of the documentaries on television about space travel, although it is by no means an obsession.

    Finally a joke ... so sorry about this ....

    "Doctor, I keep seeing a bright star in the sky.  Tell me doctor, is it Sirius (... just in case you need it explaining, it is a pun on 'is it serious'.)

    Sorry about that one!

  • I did go to a talk a few months back about the satellites of the outer planets. We do know so much more about them than when I was a youngster because of the probes.  The images can be very detailed and emphasise that there seem to be no two bodies in the solar system that are alike - they've just discovered snowdrifts on Pluto, which you wouldn't find on volcanic places like Io.

    After hundreds of millions of years as the sun grows hotter, it's possible these places may support life, although not as we know it. That's why they crashed Cassini into Saturn.

    There are several more dwarf planets found now besides Pluto, so I wonder if there's any chance of a probe to those getting off the ground. I might be interested in links to recent articles or still images.  July's Sky at Night is on the 8th for those of us with access to BBC TV (I mentioned it before & it's partly the fact it's on irregular dates that makes it hard to remember to watch).  They used to do monthly sky maps too. Even in the city, I noticed Jupiter is very bright and close to the Moon at the moment.

  • Do you mean exploration by unmanned probes to other planets, satellites, comets etc?

    Yes!

  • Thaaaaanks for that, "Troglu"! Some things are fiendishly hard to find upon the 'net, and that exact number (exact-ish?!) is one of them! I asked it as if I wanted to write my own Program...   ;-)

    Astronomy and natural cycles and History are a very important thing to know. Too bad this is not taught in Schools... but that is another conversation altogether... Thank You again.

  • ...Greetings. Glad I/we could specify, here... Yes, you changed the title, from Astronomy in general, to specifiying "Space Exploration" specifically with specific specification, there...

    What I said still stands, for myself:

    but little probes with little power and little distance are not very interesting. I say get rid of "Jet Propulsion" and focus upon AntiGravity, is what I say... But it is too expensive and so that is why it is currently so limited. (..It Gets rid of Oxides and just uses pure Elements like Gold and Lithium.)

    ...That bit, there. But I guess that is not what is to be discussed here. I also said that I had long thought myself of starting an Astronomy Thread - to discuss Moon Phases, Sun Position, Constellations...and so forth.

    The only reason I do not start it now is because... Summer is here and when it is really hot then I am OFF this Forum!

    Good Luck with this Thread, anyone...!

  • Ah, I think you changed the title. Do you mean exploration by unmanned probes to other planets, satellites, comets etc?

    Or even other stars? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

    I've only skimmed the long 'Journey' video, but it seems to include images of the satellites of outer planets from actual missions plus later bits of CGI where a bit more imagination has been used.

  • I am more interested in Space Exploration.

  • A synodic month (full moon to full moon) in days of 86400 SI unit seconds is...

    29.530588853 + 0.000000002162 × (current year - 2000)

    Though I doubt the builders of Stonehenge would have specified quite as many decimal places as Wikipedia!

    And speaking of Stonehenge, it is of course the summer solstice tomorrow [looks at clock], erm, today - about 11am BST round these parts. And we have Mars, Saturn and Jupiter all visible for a night or two (might go for a midnight ramble tomorrow, my southern horizon is about 250ft higher than here!)

    Happy midsummer's day, everybody!

  • ...Excuse me, but What happened to this Thread?

    California did not reply, either... might that have been because replies were about Astronomy, rather than "Space Exploration"...?

    Anyone interested in a journey through the Universe?

    ...We all are (here), but little probes with little power and little distance are not very interesting. I say get rid of "Jet Propulsion" and focus upon AntiGravity, is what I say... But it is too expensive and so that is why it is currently so limited. (..It Gets rid of Oxides and just uses pure Elements like Gold and Lithium.)

    ...Any more discussion? I would like to know the precise number used (in software) for calculating the phases of the Moon, for example. I cannot build a StoneHenge for myself and so I do not know...!      ;-)

  • Being able to identify stars and constellations was probably my best hope of impressing girls. Now there's an app for it. Bah.

    Just been reading Scientific American on dark matter axions. Doesn't seem real somehow. One good thing about the NASA sites is the images are all free of copyright.

  • I have always loved star-gazing, and I can remember exactly when my interest in space exploration and science began - with the stunning (for their time) images of Jupiter from the Voyager probes. I can still picture now the issue of National Geographic with a little flick-book animation on the page corners that let you see the bands of clouds and the red spot swirling around - that issue got very dog-eared!

    I don't follow it as obsessively as I used to, but I keep my eye on New Scientist etc. and have a nice little internet session on the NASA websites now and then.  Living on the edge of the Dales, I can get out to somewhere with good seeing a few times a year, though the light pollution is usually to bad to see much from where I live (no chance of the Milky Way - boo!) The visual snow that my brain perceives the whole time doesn't help much either!

    I'm not great at spotting the constellations (like DC, Cassiopea is one of my main "landmarks".)  However, I have a nice little freeware application called Stellarium on my laptop, so I can take a real-time start chart out with me which can tell me what all of the objects are and when to expect meteor showers and good views of the planets etc.  I'd love to have a telescope and to do some astro-photography, but I can't really justify the expense given how few nights of good viewing I get.

  • My goodness... and Greetings California...!

    Compared to the last few weeks, there have been a lot of new Posts just within the past 24 Hours? 

    I live in London... and so LIGHT POLLUTION drowns out a lot of the Stars. But...

    Anyone interested in Astronomy here?

    I sure am! This topic was one of those I had listed as starting, albeit a little way down. (You have read my Posts and so should know what I mean.)

    I always know where Ursa Minor/The Big Dipper is... yet with me, there is always something, hmmm? In the Winter, I love to see ORION. But in the summer, I have trouble seeing such things as Pegasus or "The Summer Triangle". Without Cassiopia (a W shape), then I kind of have no idea what is going on...!

    ...However if you are wanting to discuss "space exploration" or using Videos, then I would not know so much about that (although I DO know a little about "Rocket Science".) I myself look up at the Stars and the Moon, and am one of those seemingly rare persons who knows that the SUN and the MOON can appear right next to each other during some days. But I am also limited by my situation which prevents me from being an "expert" at such matters. 

    Perhaps not a helpful post from myself, yet a post nonetheless. To discuss the visible stars, I shall try to post anyway. Thank You for a Thread about this topic.

    EDIT: Cassiopia and The Summer Triangle (!). I have not studied Astronomy in ages... But I still look up at the Stars. It kind of gives me reassurance...

  • I used to be. I grew up in the countryside where you could actually see fourth- and fifth- magnitude stars and Andromeda if lucky.  Seeing the Galilean satellites through a small telescope is great.

    Since then Galileo and Cassini probes have given really high-quality closeups of the same tiny dots, but I've lost interest rather. I don't even watch Sky at Night on the BBC any more.