Space stuff

Guys, there's an opportunity to add your name to the list of peeps that will go to the moon on Artemis.

www3.nasa.gov

NASA: VIPER

NASA's VIPER Moon rover (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) will explore the extreme environment of the Moon's South Pole in search of ice and other potential resources that will help inform future crewed missions in the Artemis program.
www3.nasa.gov www3.nasa.gov

Birdcats.jpg
 
My Dads name is on the microfilm "Lunar Bible Set" that went to the moon on Apollo 12. :) He Was at Northwestern univ at Evanston in '70 With one of the astronauts' brother.
 
I did the "send your name around the moon" with Artemis I. I also recently learned that my grandfather was heavily involved in the Mercury program in the '50s; his name was on at least one nose cone that went up with the original 7 (OK, I guess technically 6) astronauts. My uncle supposedly has a stash of vintage photos from that time period; I need to pester him to see and scan them. :)

We got our KSC passes along with seating to view the Axiom-3 launch by the Saturn-V center along the Banana Creek. We'll see if it goes up while we're there - weather looks unstable that week.
 
A suggestion on older relatives: Get with them, scan photos, get them to label people. I have shitloads of old photos that I'm unsure who people are.
 
There's another launch tomorrow, sometime after 10 am. I heard 10 pm launch, so that'' be a fuck of a countdown, lol. Let me see what space.com says...

Launch Schedule – Spaceflight Now

spaceflightnow.com


10:34 p.m. ET (0234 UTC on the 7th) That's the Boeing crewed mission test. Their tests haven't been great. There's certainly a nascar feel to this one. "Will these guys buy it today, and close Boeing forever?" I'll be making popcorn, lol.
 
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The first G4 class geomagnetic storm since 2005 is happening this weekend.

It's clear tonight so I'll be looking. Anyone else keeping their eyes open?

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It was too cloudy here this morning to see it!

Joe
 
I didn't get that nice of a display. If you had to guess what percent of that your eyes could see, what would that be? I could only see 50% of what my phone could pick up
 
That photo is a 30 second ISO400 exposure on my DSLR, with contrast maxed out and a few other tweaks in Photoshop RAW.

In reality it was a greenish-gray haze with visible contrast definition on the lower color bands and some of the vertical streaking, but it was still pretty dim. It was easily mistaken for fog or low clouds!

This is more like what we could see in person (between all the cars that were driving up with their headlights blinding us :mad:):
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While I'm at it, here are a couple of the other pics I processed this morning. One I took looking east towards Cleveland, but the best views were north over the lake.

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The glow in the far distance is most likely London, ON - about 110 miles away.
 
theterminator93 said:
That photo is a 30 second ISO400 exposure on my DSLR, with contrast maxed out and a few other tweaks in Photoshop RAW.

In reality it was a greenish-gray haze with visible contrast definition on the lower color bands and some of the vertical streaking, but it was still pretty dim. It was easily mistaken for fog or low clouds!

This is more like what we could see in person (between all the cars that were driving up with their headlights blinding us :mad:):
View attachment 5537

While I'm at it, here are a couple of the other pics I processed this morning. One I took looking east towards Cleveland, but the best views were north over the lake.

View attachment 5538
View attachment 5539

The glow in the far distance is most likely London, ON - about 110 miles away.
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What time did you take these last night? I'm near Terre Haute, IN and was hoping to see some of this. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be visible all weekend.
 
I was up there between about 12:45 and 1:15. At that point some high clouds started to roll in, so I headed home.
 
gunn said:
I wonder how many satellites Starlink lost to this solar storm? They lost 38 in the 2022 solar storm despite having the ionosphere to protect them.

I never really used Starlink until this trip to Baja; its pretty amazing to see it work.
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Interesting. I hadn't heard that they'd lost some satellites in 2022.

I've used Starlink a couple of times both in Texas and down in Mexico. I was very impressed with it's speed.
 
Those are some awesome shots, Brandon! I'd send them to Astronomy Magazine! Sky and Telescope was also a good one. I'd never seen the magnetic field lines at the north pole before! That's both Awesome, and good science! send it to people! The colors here were red purple, and green. Green is O3 ions,Excited oxygen atoms shine red when they are more than 120 miles above the surface and glow green from 60 to 120 miles. Excited nitrogen atoms give off pink or purple hues below 120 miles. Dancing green or purple auroras are typically seen at higher latitudes. It has to do with the lifetime of the ions; the longer it takes for the ion to hit something else to lose the ionizations, the more energy it can absorb, before it's neutralized, and emits a photon. Red is lowest energy, uv is the most. A blue photon has a lot more energy. Different color photons are more likely at differen't atmospheric pressure vs altitude.
B, will you send me the one thith the circles, in the highest res you have? I'd make a poster out of that! My local ups store does poster prints, 3'x 4' for 150. :)
 
The russian army has the full support of Elon. :( (I should explain. He turned off starlink access to the Ukranian Armed forces during several crucial battles.)
Ron, do you have your camera gear with you? Some people travel with it, most don't. :)
 
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The best camera I ever found, for astrophotography, was a minolta SRT-101. It has a lever to flip up the mirror, and do long exposures, without killing a battery. As a kid, I bought old clocks at the local pawnshop. The hour hand is the right speed for an equatorial tracker. With the help of one of my neighbors, I built a great equatorial tracker. It took years of refinement to get it right. I guess that was the first engineering project I did, lol.
Those cameras no longer work, you can't get the mercury- based batteries they need. :(
 
Grog6 said:
The russian army has the full support of Elon. :( (I should explain. He turned off starlink access to the Ukranian Armed forces during several crucial battles.)
Ron, do you have your camera gear with you? Some people travel with it, most don't. :)
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No, unfortunately I don’t. I just got back from a drive out into the country side to find some relatively dark sky. The best I saw were a few flickers across the sky. Didn’t even try to take a picture with my phone.

One of my neighbors back home in Charlotte captured this spectacular shot last night.

IMG_9228.jpeg
 
I didn't find the lights on saturday. I hadn't heard about the day 1 event until it already happened. I got pretty high up on altitude, not a cloud in sight, and in a dark enough location that I couldn't see stuctures without the headlamps on. Cruising up and down normally trivial veins of road looking for darkness was pretty fun though. Theres a bunch of new development being established, just empty burbs without buildings. The spots would have been great to perch on, but they have new streets lights up too and they are bright. Probably too bright for comfort, but the bright side is that most manufacturers have been trying to sell street lamps that point downward more than ever
 
Best viewing last night - at or above the green line.

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On June 5th, Elon is going to launch the next starship. link goes up at noon.
 
Looks like some milestones today (this week)!

Boeing's Starliner finally got off the ground with humans on board, and docked with the ISS today (though not without its own set of glitches).

SpaceX's Starship IV took flight. The super heavy booster finally succeeded in a soft landing (at sea) as did the Starship itself, despite suffering heat damage to one of the control fins.
 
Just watched the Starship IV launch replay. Just incredible what they’ve accomplished! Hats off to the SpaceX team!
 
Agreed! This was a great week for spaceflight. I remember thinking, looking at the boeing rocket made me comment "Ribbed for her pleasure", lol.
Then I saw the starship. :rofl: BTW, don't do the search you might think of, lol. You're better off not seeing that. :rofl:
 
Grog6 said:
Agreed! This was a great week for spaceflight. I remember thinking, looking at the boeing rocket made me comment "Ribbed for her pleasure", lol.
Then I saw the starship. :rofl: BTW, don't do the search you might think of, lol. You're better off not seeing that. :rofl:
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eww...
 
OK. Something cool, for our inner space geek is: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
When soeting big happens, these are the guys that say "you can see them in Tennessee" The first time I found these guys was in the 80's; NOAA was one of my customers when I repaired typewriters. '86 or so. They had a bbs you could connect to to get electrical atmospheric weather, which hams doing long distance care about.
 
I went back thru and watched the different vids available for the starship launch today,Scott Manley had the best video, with analysis, of todays flight 4 mission. One if the fins melted, but the control adapted, and landed anyway. Seeing it fall over is a trip, lol. I'd say the heat shield, control surfaces, and anything else melted would probably be the only things to fix at this point. I'd say the next test will involve cargo, to see carry capability. I'd guess, Less than 5 years to crewed flight.
 
More Boeing problems ... :facepalm:

Shoulda used a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

www.yahoo.com

Boeing Starliner Stuck on Space Station as More Leaks Discovered

Poking Holes After years of delays and technical problems, Boeing's Starliner finally made it to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board last week. But when it'll be able to undock and deliver its crew of two back to the surface remains to be...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
 
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