Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration: Control, we have cleared the tower!

[ANS Kamas P81]

I'll start this one off with dashcam footage of the Portugal meteor that fell overnight there.

https://x.com/Dexerto/status/1792000780284702818

That sucker was bright!

[Maingunnery]

I'll start this one off with dashcam footage of the Portugal meteor that fell overnight there.

https://x.com/Dexerto/status/1792000780284702818

That sucker was bright!

Great video, for a very brief moment it looked like daytime.

[Daryk]

Wow!  That was amazingly bright!

And thanks for starting the new thread Kamas! :)

[rebs]

That was an excellent video.  I love how night turned to day in the brief burn.



The Orion Nebula, star-forming jewel box.  JWST did some observations and produced some stunning images.  I'll attach a couple of the new pics, but the article linked isn't a bad read.

https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-orion-nebula-m42-new-light

[Wrangler]

A close up of the surface from the Horizon probe.  This is NASA website hotlink.

[rebs]

I love that shot of Pluto and its atmosphere.  New Horizons provided us with so much detail.

Before then all we had were fuzzy Hubble images and artists' depictions. 

[ANS Kamas P81]

A chemical spectrum for meteors - the one in Portugal must have been rich in iron and magnesium.

[rebs]

The only color I recall seeing in RL is the same green-blue as the Portugal Meteor.  Probably pretty common material, and another small good sign for future industrial efforts up there.  Plenty of raw materials to be had.

[rebs]

Video showing a computer generated image of Betelgeuse roiling and bubbling in great expansive convulsions.

I knew it was a very large star, but this video is showing that it's diameter is roughly the size of Jupiter's orbit around the sun. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/webcontent/web-content/vi-MzeZiu4IzV7%2BXQ?vid=0-8_qf3BCl8&provider=yt&ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=3c5fefc35a1740b4bd057ce08e10e0f5&ei=22

[Sabelkatten]

"Bubbles the size of Earth... ORBIT!"

That's some scale right there!

[Daryk]

That's a supergiant for you! :)

[rebs]

That's a supergiant for you! :)

Indeed it is a supergiant.  But my Astronomy profs all said supergiant Betelgeuse was about the size of Mars’ orbit.  If we go by the very rough (and only moderately accurate) idea of each planet being more or less twice as far from the sun as the next closest one before it…. It takes a second to realize there are several “orbital stations” between Mars’ orbit (about 2 years to complete) and Jupiter’s orbit (under 12 years).


Forget all the “about”, “approximate” and “almost”.  This is a huge size discrepancy from classroom to now.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Considering the current state of Betelgeuse, it might just be roiling between the size of Mars orbit and Jupiter's - it's contracted well down several times over the decades it's been observed. 

[rebs]

The roiling is absolutely huge, but Mars is rough average 227 million miles from the sun, and Jupiter is about 778 million.  It would appear far more wild in the video, as the waves and troughs would be exceedingly dramatic. 

This is about a computer model of Betelgeuse, and the hard numbers vary drastically.  We don't know it like we know our own solar system.  My observation was really about how much we've learned in a few decades.  Though instability in the old star no doubt plays a big part too.

[Wrangler]

Closer to home, technically from the ISS.   

This a picture of St. Lawrence River and circular Lake Manicouagan from the ISS.  The 100 km lake that essentially goes around like ring is on the right of the river.
The lake itself is what remains of rocky impact crater from 200 million years ago.
 
Better view of the lake during spring/summer.

[Daryk]

I've heard that name before, but that's the first time I've seen the imagery... wow! :)

[rebs]

Give me a couple weeks to paddle around that lake, explore, and camp, thank you.  Seriously, thank you to the universe.  (I'd bet the mosquitos will carry you away if you don't have the good spray.)

I wonder what the first explorers thought when they mapped that one out for the first time?

Edit: Having worked in surveying and such, I can picture the first cartographers telling the explorers and surveyors that they have to go back out and draw up new notes on the lake because "there's no way it can possibly be a circle".