Recent comments in /f/space

aurumae t1_jdppk9t wrote

Reply to comment by portmantuwed in [NASA on Twitter] Newly-discovered asteroid 2023 DZ2 will pass Earth more than 100,000 miles (161,000 km) away–about half the distance to the Moon–making its close approach at 3:51 p.m. EDT (12:51 p.m. PDT) by ICumCoffee

My point was to illustrate that even though the moon is the closest thing to us in space the distances are still vast compared to the sizes of the planets themselves. The Earth and moon are often depicted as being practically on top of each other, but the distance between them is two orders of magnitude greater than the size of either body. Like I said the distance is so big that you could fit all the planets in the solar system between the Earth and the moon (though as someone pointed out, only at apogee). Of course, since the moon is the closest thing to us, other distances are going to be much more impressive, but the fact that you could drop a great big giant thing like Jupiter in between the Earth and the moon and for it not even to be a tight fit I found really helped me to get a sense of the distance.

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J3RRYLIKESCHEESE OP t1_jdpmgvi wrote

Reply to I took over 8000 one second exposures with my 10" Dobsonian telescope to get this shot of the Needle Galaxy by J3RRYLIKESCHEESE

Here is my latest DSO work! Caldwell 38 aka The Needle Galaxy. I took this on March 22, 2023 from my backyard in Salem, OR. I spent about 5 hours to capture this data, meaning that on average about half the frames were rejected due to tracking/wind or other factors.

Details: Used sharpcap livestacking to shoot 50, 3 minute stacks consisting of 180x1 sec exposures. Then RGB alignment was done on all the frames to align the color channels using AstroSurface, and the data the 50, 3min stacks were also stacked using AstroSurface. The master stack was preprocessing in SiRiL with green noise removal, background extraction, banding reduction and color calibration. Final color adjustment, denoise, and sharpening done in GIMP.

Gear: SW 10" GoTo Dob and Uranus-C with UV/IR cut filter

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morosis1982 t1_jdpmax8 wrote

Reply to comment by FTR_1077 in Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by cnbc_official

I wasn't aware FH had failed, mind expanding on that? I was under the impression it's just that most launches don't require that capability given how ubiquitous F9 has become.

Starlink is a bit of a left field idea but from the sounds of it was designed as a way to provide cashflow long term to develop Starship. Not all that crazy given they owned the launch vehicles and used it to test the reusability of them long term.

I somewhat agree with Starship, it's hard to see that many people with requirements that fit it's capability, but that's also possibly just because those capabilities just a few years ago were hundreds of millions per launch. It's likely the lower launch costs will see a lot more development in the space just as we saw with F9.

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ParadoxPupcake t1_jdplpwd wrote

Reply to 3 years ago I built this telescope in my parents' garage. It's since shown me supernovae, comets, 3 dwarf planets and been looked through by thousands of other people. by __Augustus_

Whaaaat, I had just left Sabino Canyon at like 4pm today and saw a bunch of cars with space decals pull in. Just my luck to miss this haha. Now I know what was going on, and I'll plan to attend next year. Super cool stuff, great job, and thanks for sharing!

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