OT: 2-weeks to Pluto

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  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    Amazing shots..

    Snapping pictures/vids of the planets is fun stuff, somehow makes me more connected to our distance neighbors. Glad other people enjoy it as well.

    Here's one I snagged of Jupiter last year. (8 inch telescope and probably about 20288 frames)

    After a couple of days of waiting I caught the ring guy as well(Saturn). Saturn is a tough one to document. (4515 frames)

  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 12,125
    edited July 2015

    Cool pictures! :-)

    I never had a good telescope. However, back in the early 60s, my parents did get me a small 2" 60x refractor toyish telescope on a rinky dink 10" tripod that wouldn't hold position well, much less track an object automatically. The telescope was made of metal with glass lenses and of much higher quality than the plastic crap they push as children's telescopes now days. (I still have it.) I was about 13 years old and tinkered together a longer tripod and on the rare nights that we could see stars clearly I'd bundle up and sit on a kitchen chair in the driveway for a while peering at the sky. I was actually able to see the rings of Saturn (it looked like a pinhead with ears) and even got my parents to see them too. But mostly I just looked at the moon or spied on the neighbors, or go up onto the hill in back of the house and peer across town.

    For many years after that I wanted a good telescope. When I was making good money I'd look at them in the stores and catalogs but could never decide just now "good" I wanted to pay for. A 12" in an observatory on a mountain in Arizona would be OK but then I woke up to smell the coffee. Then they finally got the Hubble working properly and my itch for my own telescope just faded away. I envy people who have decent telescope in places where they're useful and have the time to use them, but that wasn't in my cards. Sigh! Oh well, I can't complain because I ended up working at the Kennedy Space Center and seeing the explorations unfold from the inside. One of the people I worked with at one of my jobs ended up getting a position at one of the big observatories as computer operator. I sort of envied him but I don't think I could have taken the isolation.

    Post edited by LeatherGryphon on
  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    @MEC4D Thanks.

    @LeatherGryphon that's pretty awesome. I'm not science minded enough to get any work in that area. Must have been exciting.

  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,403
    edited December 1969

    MEC4D said:
    NASA mentioned the pyramid structure in a post on Google+ together with the white reflections suppose to be ice or salt deposit on Ceres

    Spit said:
    Didn't they just spot a strange pyramid-shaped thing on a moon somewhere? I was distracted and forgot to check deeper and now I don't remember where I saw it or how I got there.

    It was the large asteroid "Ceres". Google is your friend:
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/06/22/ceres-bright-spots-pyramid/

    It's a 3 mile high pimple on a tiny dwarf-planet sprinkled with glitter. The pimple is probably a volcano of some sort and the glitter fields are probably ice puddles of some sort, but the idiot press will want to hype it up into alien bases or space monster eggs or some such moronity. (Remember the so-called "Face on Mars"?) :blank:

    If there's anything we've learned from looking closely at all of the myriads of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets we've been to, it's that they are all different and sometimes quite surprising in the unexpected stuff they show us about what's possible. Finding Ceres to be without surprises would have been highly unlikely and surprising in itself! I expect Pluto and its moons will each have some interesting "mysteries" of their own. :coolsmile:

    NASA has some very nice image maps of the surfaces of many of the visited objects. A lot of them are in a format that can be wrapped around a sphere. examples: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14937 and
    http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18434
    Has anybody made any DAZ or Carrara scenes of some of these real planet or planetoid maps?

    Does anyone remember the canals of Mars? The human eye can often play tricks with the mind.

    Cheers,

    Alex.

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,609
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the links to the photos...there were some in the latest New Scientist that were touted as the first pics of Pluto. Always best to go to the source.

    Add me to the list that remembers Hoffa...55 at last count. I also remember watching the moon landing at school. We all sat in the corridor and watched it as it was the only way we could all watch.

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited December 1969

    MEC4D said:
    NASA mentioned the pyramid structure in a post on Google+ together with the white reflections suppose to be ice or salt deposit on Ceres

    Spit said:
    Didn't they just spot a strange pyramid-shaped thing on a moon somewhere? I was distracted and forgot to check deeper and now I don't remember where I saw it or how I got there.

    It was the large asteroid "Ceres". Google is your friend:
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/06/22/ceres-bright-spots-pyramid/

    It's a 3 mile high pimple on a tiny dwarf-planet sprinkled with glitter. The pimple is probably a volcano of some sort and the glitter fields are probably ice puddles of some sort, but the idiot press will want to hype it up into alien bases or space monster eggs or some such moronity. (Remember the so-called "Face on Mars"?) :blank:

    If there's anything we've learned from looking closely at all of the myriads of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets we've been to, it's that they are all different and sometimes quite surprising in the unexpected stuff they show us about what's possible. Finding Ceres to be without surprises would have been highly unlikely and surprising in itself! I expect Pluto and its moons will each have some interesting "mysteries" of their own. :coolsmile:

    NASA has some very nice image maps of the surfaces of many of the visited objects. A lot of them are in a format that can be wrapped around a sphere. examples: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14937 and
    http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18434
    Has anybody made any DAZ or Carrara scenes of some of these real planet or planetoid maps?

    Does anyone remember the canals of Mars? The human eye can often play tricks with the mind.

    Cheers,

    Alex.not to say, the translation of the original word used, "canali", lol.

  • SlimerJSpudSlimerJSpud Posts: 1,456
    edited December 1969

    I remember the hoopla when Voyager I made it to Jupiter. When they detected a volcanic plume off the limb of Io, the whole crowd of Astronomers at JPL just about collectively wet themselves. I purchased some prints of Voyager photos directly from the Caltech bookstore. Still have them somewhere. I did two years at Caltech, well before the Voyager probes. One of my Physics professors was Ed Stone, the project scientist for both Voyagers.

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited July 2015

    It's not a loss of mission, just a computer glitch. Besides, it's still on course with no course corrections needed. The only Q is how long will it take to get telemetry going.

    We've already gotten more data, then was possible from earth alone.
    (EDIT)
    Besides. If we could rescue SOHO from being Solar-panel edge-on to the sun, and bring 13 back. We can get telemetry going, and still get more scientific data.

    Post edited by ZarconDeeGrissom on
  • Arnold CArnold C Posts: 740
    edited December 1969

    No wonder that thing broke, when all the well-educated people at NASA even can't spell "PEPSI" properly... :lol:
    Unregarded the question why an unmanned spacecraft really would need a stock of that.
    :P

    PEPSI!.jpg
    560 x 315 - 62K
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 108,437
    edited December 1969

    And why send a student dust-counter? Wouldn't an important mission lie this be better with a fully trained dust-counter?

  • RenpatsuRenpatsu Posts: 828
    edited December 1969

    No wonder that thing broke, when all the well-educated people at NASA even can't spell "PEPSI" properly... :lol:
    Unregarded the question why an unmanned spacecraft really would need a stock of that.
    :P

    Alice and Ralph probably just needed a bit intimacy ... I would have switched off any telephone/radio as well ... :)

  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 12,125
    edited July 2015

    Renpatsu said:

    No wonder that thing broke, when all the well-educated people at NASA even can't spell "PEPSI" properly... :lol:
    Unregarded the question why an unmanned spacecraft really would need a stock of that.
    :P

    Alice and Ralph probably just needed a bit intimacy ... I would have switched off any telephone/radio as well ... :)

    Well, Ralph always said he was going to send her "to the moon"... He just over did it! :smirk:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98qw86DsdZ0

    Post edited by LeatherGryphon on
  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 12,125
    edited July 2015

    @MEC4D Thanks.

    @LeatherGryphon that's pretty awesome. I'm not science minded enough to get any work in that area. Must have been exciting.

    Yep, mid to late 70s, I was in my late 20s. Worked on the 2nd floor, SW corner in the "Launch Control Center" (LCC) right next to the big "Vehicle Assembly Building" (VAB). I was principle computer systems analyst for the "Special Measurements Division". My computers received the experimental data for research projects in and around the space center. Such as Lightning research, Shuttle Tail Service Mast vibration analysis, Shuttle runway landing radar rain permeability study, A/D conversion and storage, Lightning warning study. Watched the last of the Saturn5 rockets lift the Skylab into orbit. Watched all the Saturn1B rockets send the astronauts to the Skylab, I was there for the launch of the Apollo/Soyuz launch. I was in the loop for lightning advice during the launch of the two Viking Mars landers. Cool work for a kid.

    vab.jpg
    600 x 371 - 43K
    Post edited by LeatherGryphon on
  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited December 1969

    @MEC4D Thanks.

    @LeatherGryphon that's pretty awesome. I'm not science minded enough to get any work in that area. Must have been exciting.

    Yep, worked on the 2nd floor SE corner in the Launch Control Center right next to the big Vehicle Assembly Building. "Special Measurements Division". My computers received the experimental data for research projects in and around the space center.
    Now I ask honestly, employees with the job title of 'Computer', or early generation electronic calculating devices?

    How many math grenades floating around still, or was it exclusively slide-rules, hmm.

    Honestly that was before my time (1976), tho I do have a particular fondness for VGR1 and VGR2.

  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 12,125
    edited July 2015

    @MEC4D Thanks.

    @LeatherGryphon that's pretty awesome. I'm not science minded enough to get any work in that area. Must have been exciting.

    Yep, worked on the 2nd floor SE corner in the Launch Control Center right next to the big Vehicle Assembly Building. "Special Measurements Division". My computers received the experimental data for research projects in and around the space center.

    Now I ask honestly, employees with the job title of 'Computer', or early generation electronic calculating devices?

    How many math grenades floating around still, or was it exclusively slide-rules, hmm.

    Honestly that was before my time (1976), tho I do have a particular fondness for VGR1 and VGR2.

    I was a good sliderule jockey but we also had calculators in the mid-70s. However, I was also very good at doing arithmetic in hexadecimal in my head. It was needed to calculate addresses while scanning coredump listings . My computers were real computers. Not "big iron" IBM-370 or Burroughs, but what we called at the time "mini-computers". I had two in my lab. Raytheon 706 and Raytheon RDS-500. Each required three 5 foot equipment racks. Primitive by modern standards but real computers never-the-less, with FORTRAN and Assembler programmability, multi-tasking, real-time operating system, 9-track tape drives, card reader/punch, teletype input, papertape reader/punch, graphic display tube devices, remote display into the weather office miles away, ability to record/playback video output on magnetic disk. Cabinets full of manuals, raised false floor, the whole shebang!

    Post edited by LeatherGryphon on
  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited December 1969

    @MEC4D Thanks.

    @LeatherGryphon that's pretty awesome. I'm not science minded enough to get any work in that area. Must have been exciting.

    Yep, worked on the 2nd floor SE corner in the Launch Control Center right next to the big Vehicle Assembly Building. "Special Measurements Division". My computers received the experimental data for research projects in and around the space center.

    Now I ask honestly, employees with the job title of 'Computer', or early generation electronic calculating devices?

    How many math grenades floating around still, or was it exclusively slide-rules, hmm.

    Honestly that was before my time (1976), tho I do have a particular fondness for VGR1 and VGR2.

    I was a good sliderule jockey but we also had calculators in the mid-70s. However, I was also very good at doing arithmetic in hexadecimal in my head. It was needed to calculate addresses while scanning coredump listings . My computers were real computers. Not "big iron" IBM-370 or Burroughs, but what we called at the time "mini-computers". I had two in my lab. Raytheon 706 and Raytheon RDS-500. Each required three 5 foot equipment racks. Primitive by modern standards but real computers never-the-less, with FORTRAN and Assembler programmability, multi-tasking, real-time operating system, 9-track tape drives, card reader/punch, teletype input, papertape reader/punch, graphic display tube devices, remote display into the weather office miles away, ability to record/playback video output on magnetic disk. Cabinets full of manuals, raised false floor, the whole shebang!That is cool, I'm not worthy. I'd spit out the acronym (letters), tho the first hint is on page 3 of google, lol.
    "Amateur Deep Space Network". I could only dream of working at Goldstone, Madrid, or Canberra , lol.

  • robkelkrobkelk Posts: 3,259
    edited July 2015

    No wonder that thing broke, when all the well-educated people at NASA even can't spell "PEPSI" properly... :lol:
    Unregarded the question why an unmanned spacecraft really would need a stock of that.
    :PWhat you don't see in that shot is the supply of 7-Up. They're both needed for the Cola-UnCola reactor (somewhat like Matter-AntiMatter, but more thirst-quenching.). :cheese:

    Post edited by robkelk on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,937
    edited December 1969

    robkelk said:

    No wonder that thing broke, when all the well-educated people at NASA even can't spell "PEPSI" properly... :lol:
    Unregarded the question why an unmanned spacecraft really would need a stock of that.
    :P

    What you don't see in that shot is the supply of 7-Up. They're both needed for the Cola-UnCola reactor (somewhat like Matter-AntiMatter, but more thirst-quenching.). :cheese:
    ....:lol:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JinBKqSCSac

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,696
    edited December 1969

    And why send a student dust-counter? Wouldn't an important mission lie this be better with a fully trained dust-counter?

    Grad students always get stuck with the menial jobs.

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited December 1969

    And why send a student dust-counter? Wouldn't an important mission lie this be better with a fully trained dust-counter?

    Grad students always get stuck with the menial jobs.rofl. Here is a pare of tweezers and a microscope, I want you to count the number of dust particles between here and there.

  • HellcatF6FHellcatF6F Posts: 78
    edited December 1969

    Pluto and Charon as of July 3rd: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-7-3-15_color_rotation_movie_nasa-jhuapl-swri.gif

    A glitch has temporarily shut down the probe's data collection, but is expected to be up and running again on the 7th. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/07042044-new-horizons-enters-safe-mode.html

  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 12,125
    edited July 2015

    Probe seems to be operating properly and will be ready for the fly-by.
    http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasas-new-horizons-team-reviving-pluto-probe-after-anomaly-n386876

    New thread started here:
    Countdown to Pluto : http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/58833/

    Post edited by LeatherGryphon on
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