Recent comments in /f/space

wdd09 OP t1_jdr7kfy wrote

Reply to Milky Way season is here! Photographed in St. Marks Florida. by wdd09

Florida's Forgotten Coast is one of the darkest places one can find for astrophotography in Florida. Located in northern portions of the state, this landmark is the St. Marks Lighthouse. It's the 2nd oldest lighthouse in the state and was originally built in 1831 before being rebuilt in 1842. Access to this location is difficult (legally) when the Milky Way rises in spring in the eastern skies. However, a short 25 minute window before twilight is available as soon as the primary gate opens at 6am. So I got to the gate at 6am and waited as it opened and quickly went to the location and snapped as many perspectives as I could in the 25 minute window before astronomical twilight brightened too much.

EXIF: 5 exposures for the sky at ISO2000, f/2.8, and 20s with Sony a7iii and Sigma 14mm f/1.8 lens. 5 exposures for the foreground at ISO4000, f/2.8, 30s.

More of my work is in on my Instagram.

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weathercat4 t1_jdr76vm wrote

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

Galaxies are hard in bad light pollution. I used to live in bortle 7 and when I was galaxy hunting it was more about being able to locate and detect the smudge. Andromeda was only a faint smudge and m110 was only detectable on good night's.

Try the sombrero galaxy m104 it was by far my favorite in bortle 7.

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PoisonWaffle3 t1_jdr55so wrote

Reply to The image was created by shots photographer Jon Carmichael took while flying at 39,000 feet on a Southwest flight from Portland, Oregon, to St. Louis. Credit: Jon Carmichael by Davicho77

Jon got a really great image of the 2017 solar eclipse, and there's pretty cool story behind it on his website.

In 2003 there was at least one team that recorded and took pictures of the solar eclipse over Antarctica from a plane. I recall seeing a documentary about it back then, but I can't seem to find it now. So far all I've found is this:

https://skyandtelescope.org/press-releases/eclipse-flight-overantarctica/

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Conscious_Stick8344 t1_jdr2ieh wrote

Reply to comment by EcchiOli in Latest video of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter kicking up dust and taking off for Flight #47. Ingenuity is well beyond its warranty at this point. The video was captured by the Mastcam-Z imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on March 9, 2023. by ICumCoffee

I couldn’t agree more!

And, being a constant student of history myself, I’ve seen how we’ve taken a constant “two steps forward, one step back” approach to progress. Of course, that’s generally speaking; we’ve made great, irreversible progress in some areas, and not so much in others. If anything, your comment reminds me of two quotes.

One is by documentarian Ken Burns. He said that one of the lessons he learned about history is not that it repeats itself, but that “human nature never changes.” I’d add to that that it’s cyclical in nature, where one generation starts forgetting the lessons learned in the previous ones, even though it instinctively builds on its accomplishments. Hence, we keep moving forward despite our ignorance of past lessons learned. That gives me hope, even though it’s a constant struggle to ensure we move forward with time. (And maybe that’s our lot in the universe; if we buck time and try to turn the clock back, we always pay a price for the friction we cause.)

The second quote is from Carl Sagan himself, and the comment stands on its own:

“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.” — Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

So, in closing, I think it’s up to people like us who applaud progress, understand human nature, and do our moral best to educate and enlighten those around us to the mystery and beauty of our planet as well as the universe. And we do it by supporting scientists and sources like these, popularizing it as we go, to ensure we don’t keep turning on ourselves and using technology only to destroy.

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ExtonGuy t1_jdr2fbx wrote

Reply to Discussion on Time relativity near black holes by AGARAN24

When the universe ends, all the black holes will have evaporated. Your atoms will have evaporated… first from each other, then the very electrons, protons, and neutrons in each atom will separate from each other. The neutrons will decay into protons and electrons, and probably even the protons will decay into neutrinos.

At the end times, there will be no black holes, no atoms. Just photons, electrons, and neutrinos, all separated from each other by trillions of trillions of light years.

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weathercat4 t1_jdr2f4w wrote

Reply to My camera setup on the International Space station. More details in comments. by astro_pettit

Taking an observing hood to the next level. The way you word it implies to me you cobbled it together yourself and I like to picture the other astronauts watching wondering what kind of shenanigans you are getting into.

When you look at this photo with zero context it is just such a bizarre scene. The other side of the cloth is even funnier to imagine.

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thewerdy t1_jdr0hde wrote

Reply to comment by __Augustus_ in 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_

I don't know if you're a student at the UA, but the Students for the Development and Exploration of Space (SEDS) club there has (or at least they did when I was a member in 2016) a pretty impressive Dobsonian that has a mirror that was specially built by the Mirror Lab when they were testing out some new manufacturing techniques. I believe they were developing the lightweight honeycomb structures that are now common. It's pretty old and not super fancy, but the mirror itself makes it an interesting piece of astronomy history.

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