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Finding Massive Gas - The International Year of Astronomy

2456716

Posts

  • MarathonMarathon Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    NotACrook wrote: »
    After eight years of kicking Science in the balls, this is what President-elect Obama said when he named his Science advisors:
    Whether it’s the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create twenty-first century jobs—today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation.
    …
    Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.

    This is perfect. I could kiss him.

    Marathon on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    FYI Voyager 1 should hit the heliopause sometime in 2015.

    Weaver on
  • #pipe#pipe Cocky Stride, Musky odours Pope of Chili TownRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    weaver was that "Helium Flash" part of the video on the last page a real series of images cause god damn

    #pipe on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    I don't know

    Weaver on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    An H II region is a cloud of glowing gas and plasma, sometimes several hundred light-years across, in which star formation is taking place. Young, hot, blue stars which have formed from the gas emit copious amounts of ultraviolet light, ionising the nebula surrounding them.

    H II regions may give birth to thousands of stars over a period of several million years. In the end, supernova explosions and strong stellar winds from the most massive stars in the resulting star cluster will disperse the gases of the H II region, leaving behind a cluster such as the Pleiades.

    H II regions are named for the large amount of ionised atomic hydrogen they contain, referred to as H II by astronomers (H I region being neutral atomic hydrogen, and H2 being molecular hydrogen). H II regions can be seen out to considerable distances in the universe, and the study of extragalactic H II regions is important in determining the distance and chemical composition of other galaxies.
    Triangulumnebulafull.jpg

    Weaver on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    FYI Voyager 1 should hit the heliopause sometime in 2015.

    Theoretically. We are pretty sure that there is one. Then we get to see if there's a bow shock.

    NotASenator on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Too bad voyager's stellar wind detector died in 1990 or we'd have a better idea

    Weaver on
  • Clint EastwoodClint Eastwood My baby's in there someplace She crawled right inRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    For like the last three days I've been idly watching a particular star that's been shining really brightly near the moon. Actually it's probably not a star, but I don't have a telescope to figure it out. I kind of suspect it might be Venus, although I'm probably wrong

    Clint Eastwood on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    When I was a kid I had a small telescope that I would watch the moon with and I was lucky enough to see one of the occasional jets of gas that vent out from crater floors.

    Weaver on
  • SquallSquall hap cloud Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Yeah, Venus is relatively close to the moon in the sky right now, it should be the brightest thing in the sky (aside from the moon and sun).

    Squall on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Cloudman wrote: »
    For like the last three days I've been idly watching a particular star that's been shining really brightly near the moon. Actually it's probably not a star, but I don't have a telescope to figure it out. I kind of suspect it might be Venus, although I'm probably wrong

    No, you're correct.

    Venus is currently chilling out right near the moon.

    NotASenator on
  • #pipe#pipe Cocky Stride, Musky odours Pope of Chili TownRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Cloudman wrote: »
    For like the last three days I've been idly watching a particular star that's been shining really brightly near the moon. Actually it's probably not a star, but I don't have a telescope to figure it out. I kind of suspect it might be Venus, although I'm probably wrong

    no, you're right.

    #pipe on
  • Clint EastwoodClint Eastwood My baby's in there someplace She crawled right inRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Now I feel like some kind of pimp, just guessing that shit on my own.

    I thought it might be Mars for a little while but it was pretty yellow last night so that theory went out the window.

    Clint Eastwood on
  • #pipe#pipe Cocky Stride, Musky odours Pope of Chili TownRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Venus and Jupiter were hells of close together and close to the crescent moon earlier this year in my sky

    one night they looked just like this : )
    the next they looked just like this ) :

    #pipe on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    #pipe wrote: »
    Venus and Jupiter were hells of close together and close to the crescent moon earlier this year in my sky

    one night they looked just like this : )
    the next they looked just like this ) :
    smileyfaceatsunset-900px-mikesalway.jpg

    NotASenator on
  • SquallSquall hap cloud Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    I love that image.

    When you first see it you're like hey this looks pretty neat then suddenly : )

    Squall on
  • #pipe#pipe Cocky Stride, Musky odours Pope of Chili TownRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    yeah it was a fun couple of nights

    #pipe on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Somebody translate this for me
    The ISM is usually far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Collisions establish a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of velocities, and the 'temperature' normally used to describe interstellar gas is the 'kinetic temperature', which describes the temperature at which the particles would have the observed Maxwell-Boltzman velocity distribution in thermodynamic equilibrium. However, the interstellar radiation field is typically much weaker than a medium in thermodynamic equilibrium; it is most often roughly that of an A star (surface temperature of ~10,000 K) highly diluted. Therefore, bound levels within an atom or molecule in the ISM are rarely populated according to the Boltzmann formula (Spitzer 1978, § 2.4).

    Depending on the temperature, density, and ionization state of a portion of the ISM, different heating and cooling mechanisms determine the temperature of the gas.

    Weaver on
  • Clint EastwoodClint Eastwood My baby's in there someplace She crawled right inRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    The one thing I'm most excited about for this new year in terms of Astronomy is that moon of Saturn, Enceladus. Place is weird as fuck, and hopefully we'll be able to learn more about it. We've already gotten some stunning images of it already though

    enceladus11_cassini600.jpg

    Clint Eastwood on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    Somebody translate this for me
    The ISM is usually far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Collisions establish a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of velocities, and the 'temperature' normally used to describe interstellar gas is the 'kinetic temperature', which describes the temperature at which the particles would have the observed Maxwell-Boltzman velocity distribution in thermodynamic equilibrium. However, the interstellar radiation field is typically much weaker than a medium in thermodynamic equilibrium; it is most often roughly that of an A star (surface temperature of ~10,000 K) highly diluted. Therefore, bound levels within an atom or molecule in the ISM are rarely populated according to the Boltzmann formula (Spitzer 1978, § 2.4).

    Depending on the temperature, density, and ionization state of a portion of the ISM, different heating and cooling mechanisms determine the temperature of the gas.

    Different bits of space in the interstellar medium are different temperatures.

    Also, the damage to Apollo 13's service module:
    a13_servicemod.gif

    NotASenator on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Everything about Saturn is weird as fuck. Saturn has a storm on it's northern pole in the shape of a hexagon for crying out loud.

    Weaver on
  • Clint EastwoodClint Eastwood My baby's in there someplace She crawled right inRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    Everything about Saturn is weird as fuck. Saturn has a storm on it's northern pole in the shape of a hexagon for crying out loud.
    I recently went through a bunch of that Astronomy Pic of the Day site's backlog and was really interested in Saturn's color changes. What a strange ball of gas.

    Clint Eastwood on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Cloudman wrote: »
    The one thing I'm most excited about for this new year in terms of Astronomy is that moon of Saturn, Enceladus. Place is weird as fuck, and hopefully we'll be able to learn more about it. We've already gotten some stunning images of it already though

    enceladus11_cassini600.jpg

    You can see the tiger stripes in that image.

    One amazing bit about that planet is like on Earth, the ice is shifting almost constantly. That moon is alive, and that's why you barely see any craters. It's constantly resurfacing itself.

    There was or possibly still is a theory that Enceladus has a global ocean underneath, and that ocean is just completely covered in thick ice.

    NotASenator on
  • SquallSquall hap cloud Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Enceladus is pretty intriguing. All that ice, plus observed water vapor jets off its surface paint a pretty promising picture for potential life.

    EDIT: CURSES! BEATEN!

    Also, accidental alliteration.

    Squall on
  • Clint EastwoodClint Eastwood My baby's in there someplace She crawled right inRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    the thought that I probably won't be alive to see humanity going to other planets or moons depresses me.

    Clint Eastwood on
  • DouglasDangerDouglasDanger PennsylvaniaRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    In Oct. last year (2008) NASA launched a satellite that is going to map out the heliopause/sheath/termination shock of the solar system.

    i have no idea what you are talking, but it sounds awesome.

    DouglasDanger on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    NaS I mean does that say that pockets of gas are actually 10K Kelvin or just some sort of relativistic temperature?

    Weaver on
  • #pipe#pipe Cocky Stride, Musky odours Pope of Chili TownRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    heliopause/sheath/termination shock

    these would all make good nicknames for a condom

    #pipe on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    In Oct. last year (2008) NASA launched a satellite that is going to map out the heliopause/sheath/termination shock of the solar system.

    i have no idea what you are talking, but it sounds awesome.

    Basically, the interstellar medium is all the gas that makes up most of the space between stars. The stars, like our Sun, our pouring out particles, essentially charged plasma, called the Solar Wind. The solar wind pushes the gas outward, creating a bubble around the Sun.

    Eventually, the pushing back of this interstellar gas slows the solar wind down below the speed of sound. This point is called the termination shock. Since it's lost so much energy by then, the interstellar medium has more of an effect past the termination shock, causing some cool shit to occur. This is called the Heliosheath. It's like an outer shell of our solar system.

    Eventually, the ISM slows down the solar wind so much that it stops moving outward. This is the heliopause and is generally considered the edge of our solar system.

    Of course, none of this takes into account the fact that our solar system is moving around our galaxy. The movement of the heliosphere around the ISM is causing a bow shock, like the wake of a boat moving through the water, essentially.

    Most of this is theory only, because Voyager I and II are the first man made craft to get our there, and their sensors are really crap and almost dead.

    This new probe will be able to map this stuff out and confirm our theories and give us more info about the edge of our solar system.

    NotASenator on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    NaS I mean does that say that pockets of gas are actually 10K Kelvin or just some sort of relativistic temperature?

    I was being vague because I don't actually know. It seems to be suggesting that the predicted velocities of particles in the ISM would represent certain temperatures in a fixed system, like in the solar system where the ambient radiation is somewhat fixed.

    However apparently out there the ambient radiation is weaker and much more prone to fluctuation and so the quantum energy levels don't really meet up with those predictions.

    I think what that really means is that shit's all over the place out there and they have no way of predicting what temperature anything would be from one place to the next.

    NotASenator on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Yeah it may turn out that interstellar travel is limited not because of lack of FTL but because anything we send out there will be obliterated unless it can do something like generate a magnetic field powerful enough to deflect the interstellar medium much as the Earth's field does with the solar wind.

    Weaver on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    Yeah it may turn out that interstellar travel is limited not because of lack of FTL but because anything we send out there will be obliterated unless it can do something like generate a magnetic field powerful enough to deflect the interstellar medium much as the Earth's field does with the solar wind.

    This is basically the whole point of the deflector dish in star trek. Can you imagine getting pelted by interstellar dust going at relativistic speeds?

    NotASenator on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Yeah.

    Also-

    Localcloud.gif

    Weaver on
  • MysstMysst King Monkey of Hedonism IslandRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    NotACrook wrote: »
    Weaver wrote: »
    Yeah it may turn out that interstellar travel is limited not because of lack of FTL but because anything we send out there will be obliterated unless it can do something like generate a magnetic field powerful enough to deflect the interstellar medium much as the Earth's field does with the solar wind.

    This is basically the whole point of the deflector dish in star trek. Can you imagine getting pelted by interstellar dust going at relativistic speeds?
    also sometimes you have to remodulate the deflector shield so that geordi has something to do.

    Mysst on
    ikbUJdU.jpg
  • DouglasDangerDouglasDanger PennsylvaniaRegistered User regular
    edited January 2009
    #pipe wrote: »
    Venus and Jupiter were hells of close together and close to the crescent moon earlier this year in my sky

    one night they looked just like this : )
    the next they looked just like this ) :

    yeah, that was awesome. (I live in PA, USA) I can never remember how many people are 'murrickans here

    DouglasDanger on
  • NotASenatorNotASenator Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    Weaver wrote: »
    Yeah.

    Also-

    Localcloud.gif

    We are in such a tiny arm of the galaxy.

    NotASenator on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    At least we're on the inside edge of the arm. Orion being the outermost arm of the galaxy I'd hate for us to get flung off into the deep.

    Weaver on
  • The_ScarabThe_Scarab Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    NotACrook wrote: »
    Weaver wrote: »
    In Oct. last year (2008) NASA launched a satellite that is going to map out the heliopause/sheath/termination shock of the solar system.

    i have no idea what you are talking, but it sounds awesome.

    Basically, the interstellar medium is all the gas that makes up most of the space between stars. The stars, like our Sun, our pouring out particles, essentially charged plasma, called the Solar Wind. The solar wind pushes the gas outward, creating a bubble around the Sun.

    Eventually, the pushing back of this interstellar gas slows the solar wind down below the speed of sound. This point is called the termination shock. Since it's lost so much energy by then, the interstellar medium has more of an effect past the termination shock, causing some cool shit to occur. This is called the Heliosheath. It's like an outer shell of our solar system.

    Eventually, the ISM slows down the solar wind so much that it stops moving outward. This is the heliopause and is generally considered the edge of our solar system.

    Of course, none of this takes into account the fact that our solar system is moving around our galaxy. The movement of the heliosphere around the ISM is causing a bow shock, like the wake of a boat moving through the water, essentially.

    Most of this is theory only, because Voyager I and II are the first man made craft to get our there, and their sensors are really crap and almost dead.

    This new probe will be able to map this stuff out and confirm our theories and give us more info about the edge of our solar system.

    I can't tell you how awesome this is. It's so awesome.

    The_Scarab on
  • World as MythWorld as Myth a breezy way to annoy serious people Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
    bpg this gets my nomination for thread of the year

    I am all over that podcast

    World as Myth on
    kQwcZLJ.png
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited January 2009
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