+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him Posted December 21, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2020 10 minutes ago, Rushu42 said: I lucked out - there was a gap in the clouds in time for me to haul out my telescope. It was great! I wish you all clear skies for your own observations. Sweet! I'm excited to see both planets at the same time through the telescope tomorrow, hope the forecast holds and we get sunny skies. 3 minutes ago, Lecky Twig said: I was so excited for it, I've been watching the two planets for get cliser together for about a month now. But I'm at my Grandna's house where there is a big ol' mountain blocking the great conjunction. Plus, therr was fog aroind the mountain top so I wouldnt of gotten a good view from the sumit if i tried. Welp, i'll just wait another 800 years for this to happen again. Yeah, it's been fun watching them close in on each other, I've been watching them since the spring. If you have clear skies tomorrow you can still see them without a telescope as optically a single planet, and can see both of planets at the same time through a telescope. 0.2° of separation is still remarkably close! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lecky Twig she/her Posted December 21, 2020 Report Share Posted December 21, 2020 1 minute ago, Hoiditthroughthegrapevine said: If you have clear skies tomorrow you can still see them without a telescope as optically a single planet, and can see both of planets at the same time through a telescope. 0.2° of separation is still remarkably close! That's the plan (if i convince someone to drive me over/around the mountain that blocks the conjunction in the middle of the night because it doesn't get properly dark here until 10pm) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Condensation she/her Posted December 22, 2020 Report Share Posted December 22, 2020 Oh my gosh, I'm going outside now to look! Can't wait to see it! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AquaRegia he/him Posted January 13, 2021 Report Share Posted January 13, 2021 Hey all, I'm also an amateur astronomy fan. Of course my sky was COMPLETELY overcast on the 21st, and days before and after... but it was cold out anyway, and I saw plenty of Jupiter and Saturn all summer! On 12/7/2020 at 9:36 AM, Rushu42 said: Oh man, I wish I'd realized that this thread existed sooner. Everything on here is very cool - thanks for all the info, @Ookla the Mok Turtle Soup! I'm still pretty amateur at astronomy, and my scope is tiny - the Celestron Astromaster 70 AZ - but I've been saving up for an upgrade. I'm currently planning on an 8" with a Dobsonian mount, but if anyone has some tips on which specific model, I'd love to hear them. @Rushu42 I own the exact telescope you are saving up for, and I LOVE it. My Orion 8" Dob is easy to set up and take down, light enough to carry around and load in a car, and with a good array of eyepieces gives great views for relatively little cash. The main downside is no motor drive, which means stuff wanders out of view pretty quickly (stupid rotating Earth, never quits), and, of course, no long-exposure photography is possible. But honestly, I bought it LOOK through. No matter how good my pictures might be, there are always better ones online. I can't afford the Hubble Space Telescope. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rushu42 she/her Posted January 14, 2021 Report Share Posted January 14, 2021 2 hours ago, AquaRegia said: @Rushu42 I own the exact telescope you are saving up for, and I LOVE it. My Orion 8" Dob is easy to set up and take down, light enough to carry around and load in a car, and with a good array of eyepieces gives great views for relatively little cash. The main downside is no motor drive, which means stuff wanders out of view pretty quickly (stupid rotating Earth, never quits), and, of course, no long-exposure photography is possible. But honestly, I bought it LOOK through. No matter how good my pictures might be, there are always better ones online. I can't afford the Hubble Space Telescope. That's so cool! Do you mind sharing where you got it from? I've been trying to find a good source online after Amazon's went out of stock. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AquaRegia he/him Posted January 14, 2021 Report Share Posted January 14, 2021 35 minutes ago, Rushu42 said: That's so cool! Do you mind sharing where you got it from? I've been trying to find a good source online after Amazon's went out of stock. https://www.telescope.com/Telescopes/Dobsonian-Telescopes/Dobsonian-Telescopes-with-Free-Shipping/Orion-SkyQuest-XT8-Classic-Dobsonian-Telescope/pc/1/c/12/sc/398/p/102005.uts?refineByCategoryId=398 That's the current version of what I have. I bought mine about 10 years ago. I'd also recommend a good quality eyepiece in the 8-12mm range. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rushu42 she/her Posted January 14, 2021 Report Share Posted January 14, 2021 2 minutes ago, AquaRegia said: https://www.telescope.com/Telescopes/Dobsonian-Telescopes/Dobsonian-Telescopes-with-Free-Shipping/Orion-SkyQuest-XT8-Classic-Dobsonian-Telescope/pc/1/c/12/sc/398/p/102005.uts?refineByCategoryId=398 That's the current version of what I have. I bought mine about 10 years ago. I'd also recommend a good quality eyepiece in the 8-12mm range. Thank you! You've no idea how helpful that is - I've been getting quite bogged down in reviews and online catalogs. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him Posted February 2, 2021 Author Report Share Posted February 2, 2021 (edited) Now that we're in February we can start the official countdown to one of the most exciting events in modern unmanned interplanetary exploration, we're now just 16 days away from the landing on Thursday February 18th of the Mars Perseverance lander. This is a great page that shows the stages of the landing, which from first entry into the Martian atmosphere will take approximately 7 minutes to descend and land! https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-perseverance-rover-22-days-from-mars-landing Starting at 11:15 am PST, NASA will be broadcasting live real time updates of the Mars lander's progress on their YouTube channel and on their NASA TV page. At 11:15 am Mars will be approximately 1.37 AUs from earth, meaning that real time communication from Mars will actually have a lag of about 680 seconds. So live from Mars will actually be 11 minutes and 20 seconds after it has actually happened. Here's a page link with the Mars lander NASA live stream events: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/watch-online/ This is a pretty amazingly sweet simulation of the full series of steps for the Entry, Descent, and Landing of the Perseverance lander, using the NASA eyes solar system simulator: https://eyesstage.jpl.nasa.gov/apps/mars2020 Here's an animated GIF (spoilered below_ of the landing after the backshell parachute portion of the lander is jettisoned, and the rocket descent lander is engaged, pretty freaking sweet! Spoiler According to the simulation, the first stage of the landing, the cruise stage separation will begin at 12:38 pm, PST, and touchdown will occur at 12:55 pm PST. My daughters and I will be tuning into the NASA's live feed at 12:45 pm. With the communication delay, we should know by 1:07 pm if the landing was a success! Rad indeed! If anyone wants to get a PM reminder the day of the Landing, just let me know, I'll send out a group one around 10:00 am PST if there's any interest in this. Edited February 2, 2021 by Hoiditthroughthegrapevine Added a sweet animation of the actual touchdown landing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AquaRegia he/him Posted February 6, 2021 Report Share Posted February 6, 2021 That's awesome, thanks! Humans are pretty smart. We're also littering the solar system like a boss. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him Posted February 17, 2021 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2021 Less than 24 hours to go before the Perseverance Lander touches down on Mars! Just a recap, the Entry, Descent and Landing starts tomorrow at 12:35 PST, and with Martian surface touchdown slated to occur at 12:55 PST. There will be an 11 minute and 20 second communication delay, but we should know if the SUV sized Perseverance lander has safely negotiated the landing by 1:07 pm PST. You can launch live coverage of the landing starting at 11:15 am PST tomorrow on Nasa's YouTube channel and on the live NASA TV feed. If you just want to watch the good parts, start watching around 12:45 pm tomorrow. If the landing is a success, we might shortly thereafter have another milestone, the first deployment of a flying vehicle on a planet other than earth. Go little drone, go! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AquaRegia he/him Posted February 18, 2021 Report Share Posted February 18, 2021 HEY we just landed some robots on Mars! That was pretty exciting. I'm not big on feeling "pride" in something I didn't personally do... but I'm proud of my species right now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him Posted February 18, 2021 Author Report Share Posted February 18, 2021 (edited) 5 hours ago, AquaRegia said: HEY we just landed some robots on Mars! That was pretty exciting. I'm not big on feeling "pride" in something I didn't personally do... but I'm proud of my species right now. Pip pip! Here's the first picture from the Perseverance lander, (picture of my TV from the live feed) from the Hazard camera. And here's the 2nd Pic, from the rear camera. One thing I learned about from watching the live feed is that NASA has a future program codenamed Dragonfly that will use the analysis of the flight of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter to design an aerial rover to explore Saturn's moon Titan. So cool! Also, another interesting detail from the live feed is that Titan's atmosphere is 4 times denser than the Earth's, and due to it lower gravity (.138 g) a human on Titan's surface could achieve lift by just flapping their arms. Here's the link to NASA's Dragonfly mission, awesome stuff: https://www.nasa.gov/dragonfly Edited February 19, 2021 by Hoiditthroughthegrapevine Added Dragonfly link, and corrected scientifically relevant detail 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Condensation she/her Posted February 19, 2021 Report Share Posted February 19, 2021 We have landing! Ingenuity is awesome, in my opinion. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him Posted February 24, 2021 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2021 So they released a 290 mb full color composite panoramic view from the Perseverance mastcams on the Mars 2020 NASA site yesterday (but I don't see it there anymore). I downloaded it and made a quick animated zoom and pan gif (spoilered below), pretty sweet. Spoiler It might have been too high resolution of an image, they have a different mastcam panoramic image up now (resolution of just 3.9 mb and the lighting is not as good) https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25622/perseverance-navcams-360-degree-panorama/ Even cooler, NASA just released composite video footage of the Entry, Descent and Landing for the Perseverance lander showing footage of the parachute deployment, the heat shield ejection and the sky crane maneuver, ending with the successful touchdown on Mars: https://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos/movies/20210222_Perseverances_Descent_Touchdown_Mars/20210222_Perseverances_Descent_Touchdown_Mars-3840.mp4 Also, NASA has released the first audio recording captured by the Perseverance rover from the surface of Mars: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/audio/ And finally, this is the best all purpose link to use to check up on updates from Perseverance (especially the Multimedia portion of the top nav menu button, especially fun to look through are the Raw images): https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him Posted March 31, 2021 Author Report Share Posted March 31, 2021 Sorry to double post but everybody's favorite extra-terran flying machine, Ingenuity, has been positioned for deployment and the first flight is scheduled for sometime in the first week of April. The Perseverance lander is looking for a good launch site now, and the engineers are keeping the launch time fluid to maximize environmental conditions for the maiden flight. Spoilered below are some pictures from the Perseverance raw image feed of Ingenuity maneuvering into touchdown position: Spoiler Sweet! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honorless he/him Posted April 1, 2021 Report Share Posted April 1, 2021 On 8/31/2020 at 5:45 AM, Hoiditthroughthegrapevine said: Arrokoth I really liked the name Ultima Thule a lot better! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him Posted April 1, 2021 Author Report Share Posted April 1, 2021 59 minutes ago, Honorless said: I really liked the name Ultima Thule a lot better! I didn't know it had that far superior appellation, but you are absolutely correct. I think we have seen the last of the nickname Ultima Thule though, there's always going to be something that is the farthest distant reachable object. Looking into this more, I found some cool spectroscopic images of the asteroid formerly known as Ultima Thule, Spoilered below. Ones a minds eye type where you stare past the double images until you have the right eye focal length to get them to merge, the other is the red and blue 3d Pic. Spoiler NASA also has a rotatable 3D model view of Arrokoth on this information page. Arrokoth orbits at a distance of about 4 billion miles from the sun (44.6 au) and has a year that is 239 earth years long. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.