Space and Astronomy Megathread (MERGED) - Part 1

Shark_Kennedy_4176.jpg




The Shark Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Stephen Kennedy

Explanation: There is no sea on Earth large enough to contain the Shark nebula. This predator apparition poses us no danger as it is composed only of interstellar gas and dust. Dark dust like that featured here is somewhat like cigarette smoke and created in the cool atmospheres of giant stars. After being expelled with gas and gravitationally recondensing, massive stars may carve intricate structures into their birth cloud using their high energy light and fast stellar winds as sculpting tools. The heat they generate evaporates the murky molecular cloud as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow red. During disintegration, we humans can enjoy imagining these great clouds as common icons, like we do for water clouds on Earth. Including smaller dust nebulae such as Lynds Dark Nebula 1235 and Van den Bergh 149 & 150, the Shark nebula spans about 15 light years and lies about 650 light years away toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus).
 
squeekness said:
Lol. :p You can never have too much space.
Click to expand...
Speaking of space being big…

You can get “scale models” of the Solar System. However, such models are only to scale with respect to the relative sizes of the Sun and planets. Size and distance would be quite impossible to depict with a desktop toy. But online, there are DIY instructions on how to build a true scale model. One is called the “peppercorn Solar System” (best constructed in a large field :cwink:).

The Sun is represented by a soccer ball (or large cantaloupe); and Mercury (the first planet) is the head of a pin. So much for size. For distance, you’d need to pace out 10 yards (!) to get the proper scale of Mercury’s orbit. (At this scale, the soccer ball is still easy enough to see. But good luck trying to spot the pinhead.) Next, you pace out an additional 9 yards from pinhead/Mercury (19 yards from the soccer ball/Sun) to get to Venus — represented by a peppercorn. Then, an additional 7 yards (26 yards total) will get you to Earth — also a peppercorn.

From there, the distances only get bigger. By the time you place the model of Neptune at its proper relative distance, you’ll have walked 777 yards (!). (Indeed, you might need a pair of binoculars to see back to your soccer ball/Sun.) And keep in mind, these distances only represent the radius of the Solar System model. The diameter would be twice this size.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you might try setting up a model of the nearest star system: the Alpha Centauri system. But at the “peppercorn scale,” the Alpha Centauri A soccer ball would need to be about 4000 miles away... :eek:

So, yeah. There’s a lot of space in space. :yay:
 
Seems to me I saw a scientist mark out that same solar system scale in a field on How the Universe Works, one of my favorite shows. It really helps to put things into perspective, lol.
 
Dr. said:
Speaking of space being big…

You can get “scale models” of the Solar System. However, such models are only to scale with respect to the relative sizes of the Sun and planets. Size and distance would be quite impossible to depict with a desktop toy. But online, there are DIY instructions on how to build a true scale model. One is called the “peppercorn Solar System” (best constructed in a large field :cwink:).

The Sun is represented by a soccer ball (or large cantaloupe); and Mercury (the first planet) is the head of a pin. So much for size. For distance, you’d need to pace out 10 yards (!) to get the proper scale of Mercury’s orbit. (At this scale, the soccer ball is still easy enough to see. But good luck trying to spot the pinhead.) Next, you pace out an additional 9 yards from pinhead/Mercury (19 yards from the soccer ball/Sun) to get to Venus — represented by a peppercorn. Then, an additional 7 yards (26 yards total) will get you to Earth — also a peppercorn.

From there, the distances only get bigger. By the time you place the model of Neptune at its proper relative distance, you’ll have walked 777 yards (!). (Indeed, you might need a pair of binoculars to see back to your soccer ball/Sun.) And keep in mind, these distances only represent the radius of the Solar System model. The diameter would be twice this size.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you might try setting up a model of the nearest star system: the Alpha Centauri system. But at the “peppercorn scale,” the Alpha Centauri A soccer ball would need to be about 4000 miles away... :eek:

So, yeah. There’s a lot of space in space. :yay:
Click to expand...
Really interesting. And all of that just for the nearest star system - all of which is an invisible speck for the size of the universe. :D
 
NorthSaturn_Cassini_960.jpg




Saturn's Northern Hexagon
Image Credit & Copyright: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team

Explanation: Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar System. Acquiring its first sunlit views of far northern Saturn in late 2012, the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera recorded this stunning, false-color image of the ringed planet's north pole. The composite of near-infrared image data results in red hues for low clouds and green for high ones, giving the Saturnian cloudscape a vivid appearance. This and similar images show the stability of the hexagon even 20+ years after Voyager. Movies of Saturn's North Pole show the cloud structure maintaining its hexagonal structure while rotating. Unlike individual clouds appearing like a hexagon on Earth, the Saturn cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal length. Four Earths could fit inside the hexagon. Beyond the cloud tops at the upper right, arcs of the planet's eye-catching rings are tinted bright blue.
 
Brutikus said:
NorthSaturn_Cassini_960.jpg




Saturn's Northern Hexagon
Image Credit & Copyright: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team

Explanation: Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar System. Acquiring its first sunlit views of far northern Saturn in late 2012, the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera recorded this stunning, false-color image of the ringed planet's north pole. The composite of near-infrared image data results in red hues for low clouds and green for high ones, giving the Saturnian cloudscape a vivid appearance. This and similar images show the stability of the hexagon even 20+ years after Voyager. Movies of Saturn's North Pole show the cloud structure maintaining its hexagonal structure while rotating. Unlike individual clouds appearing like a hexagon on Earth, the Saturn cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal length. Four Earths could fit inside the hexagon. Beyond the cloud tops at the upper right, arcs of the planet's eye-catching rings are tinted bright blue.
Click to expand...

Some aliens saw Pentagon and decided to make something more impressive. :)
 
BeltofEverest_Mukherjee_4000_annotated.jpg




The Belt of Venus over Mount Everest
Image Credit & Copyright: Soumyadeep Mukherjee

Explanation: You've surely seen it, but you might not have noticed it. During a cloudless twilight, just before sunrise or after sunset, part of the atmosphere above the horizon appears slightly dark and off-color. Called the Belt of Venus, this transitional band between the dark eclipsed sky and the bright day sky can be seen most prominently in the direction opposite the Sun. Straight above, blue sky is normal sunlight reflecting off the atmosphere, while near the horizon the clear sky can appear more orange or red. In the Belt of Venus, the atmosphere reflects more light from the setting (or rising) Sun and so appears more red. Featured here, the Belt of Venus was photographed over several Himalayan mountains including, second from the right, Mount Everest, the tallest mountainon Earth. Although usually not mentioned, the belt is frequently caught by accident in other photographs.
 
Gizmodo - Breakthrough Gravitational Wave Findings Suggest Supermassive Black Holes Are Constantly Warping Spacetime
Pulses from over 100 rapidly spinning neutron stars were timed to spot a phenomenon theorized by Einstein.

“The expected signal is the random ‘background’ ocean of these gravitational waves, which is the sum of the waves from every binary supermassive black hole in the universe,” said Daniel Reardon, an astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology and a member of OzGrav, in an email to Gizmodo. “Observing this gravitational-wave background has important consequences for our understanding of the formation history of our universe, because supermassive black holes are the engines at the heart of galaxies.”

Gravitational waves were first predicted by Einstein in his theory of general relativity. As described by Einstein, the waves are changes to a gravitational field that travel at the speed of light. Indeed, gravitational waves emerge from seismic interactions of the universe’s most massive and compact objects. When black holes orbit or collide with each other, or other very dense objects like neutron stars, gravitational waves are produced by the interaction.
Click to expand...

Science Alert - BREAKING NEWS: Physicists Have Detected The Background Hum of The Universe

Astronomers ‘hear’ the celestial choir of gravitational waves for the first time | CNN
 
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MagnarTheGreat said:
Gizmodo - Wild Webb image uncovers carbon molecule in distant star system.
A carbon-based ion—likely an important building block of interstellar carbon chemistry—was spotted in a protoplanetary disk 1,350 light-years away.

Scientific American - In a First, Scientists See Neutrinos Emitted by the Milky Way
The disk of our galaxy was long thought to produce these ghostly high-energy particles, but they haven’t been detected until now
Click to expand...
Nice to see things we only guessed at finally being proven. :D Yay, science!
 
New JWST image of Saturn — calibrated to accentuate its ring system.

jwst-saturn.jpg

The three dots on the left are the moons Dione, Enceladus and Tethys.


And... a composite JWST group photo of the Solar System's two gas giants and two ice giants:
GasIceGiants.jpg

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (click to enlarge)
 
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