Space Stuff and the Such.

[Big Kev]

These Saturn V and Shuttle models are amazing!
http://www.diecastaircraftforum.com/oth ... 144-a.html
http://www.diecastaircraftforum.com/oth ... 144-a.html

[DexterPunk]

Hard to post an article because it was just announced a few mins ago (2am Friday morn)... I'm guessing by the time some of you wake up, there will be some news articles that have popped up.

Anyway, the Kepler team have just announced they have found a good earth 2.0 candidate. Almost the exact same distance from its star as we are from ours. Their star is the same size as ours too. Very good chance the exo-planet is rocky, and has water and an atmosphere. It is about 2x the size of earth though.

From memory it's called Kepler 452b. About 11,000 light years away.

[Big Kev]

A haul of planets from Nasa's Kepler telescope includes a world sharing many characteristics with Earth.

Kepler-452b orbits at a very similar distance from its star, though its radius is 60% larger.

Mission scientists said they believed it was the most Earth-like planet yet.

Such worlds are of interest to astronomers because they might be small and cool enough to host liquid water on their surface - and might therefore be hospitable to life.

Nasa's science chief John Grunsfeld called the new world the "closest so far" to Earth.

And John Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at Nasa's Ames Research Center in California, added: "It's a real privilege to deliver this news to you today. There's a new kid on the block that's just moved in next door."

The new world joins other exoplanets such as Kepler-186f that are similar in many ways to Earth.

Determining which is most Earth-like depends on the properties one considers. Kepler-186f, announced in 2014, is smaller than the new planet, but orbits a red dwarf star that is significantly cooler than our own.

Kepler-452b, however, orbits a parent star which belongs to the same class as the Sun: it is just 4% more massive and 10% brighter. Kepler-452b takes 385 days to complete a full circuit of this star, so its orbital period is 5% longer than Earth's.

The mass of Kepler-452b cannot be measured yet, so astronomers have to rely on models to estimate a range of possible masses, with the most likely being five times that of Earth. If it is rocky, the world would likely still have active volcanism and its gravity would be roughly twice that on our own planet.

The new world is included in a haul of 500 new possible planets sighted by the Kepler space telescope around distant stars.

Twelve of the new candidates are less than twice Earth's diameter, orbiting in the so-called habitable zone around their star.

This zone refers to a range of distances at which the energy radiated by the star would permit water to exist as a liquid on the planet's surface if certain other conditions are also met.

Of these 500 candidates, Kepler-452b is the first to be confirmed as a planet.

Dr Suzanne Aigrain, from the University of Oxford, who was not involved with the study, told BBC News: "I do believe the properties described for Kepler-452b are the most Earth-like I've come across for a confirmed planet to date.

"What seems even more significant to me is the number of planets in the habitable zone of their host stars with radii below two Earth radii; 12 is quite a few compared to the pre-existing Kepler planet catalogue.

"It bodes well for their attempts to provide a more robust measure of the incidence of Earth-like planets, which is the top-level goal of the Kepler mission."

While similar in size and brightness to the Sun, Kepler-452b's host star is 1.5 billion years older than ours. Scientists working on the mission therefore believe it could point to a possible future for the Earth.

"If Kepler-452b is indeed a rocky planet, its location vis-a-vis its star could mean that it is just entering a runaway greenhouse phase of its climate history," explained Dr Doug Caldwell, a Seti Institute scientist working on the Kepler mission.

"The increasing energy from its aging sun might be heating the surface and evaporating any oceans. The water vapour would be lost from the planet forever."

"Kepler-452b could be experiencing now what the Earth will undergo more than a billion years from now, as the Sun ages and grows brighter."

Dr Don Pollacco, from Warwick University, UK, who was not involved with the latest analysis, told the BBC: "Kepler data allows you to estimate the relative size of a planet to its host star, so if you know the size of the host, hey presto, you know the size of the planet.

"However, to go further - i.e. is it rocky? - involves measuring the mass of the planets and this is much more difficult to do as the stars are too far away for these measurements (which are incredibly difficult) to make.

"So in reality they have no idea what this planet is made of: It could be rock but it could be a small gassy ball or something more exotic maybe."

Dr Chris Watson, from Queen's University Belfast, UK, commented: "Other Kepler habitable zone planets may well be more Earth-like in this respect. For example, Kepler-186f is approximately 1.17 Earth radii, and Kepler-438b is approximately 1.12 Earth radii.

"In fact, at 1.6 Earth radii, this would place Kepler-452b in a category of planet called a 'Super-Earth' - our Solar System does not actually have any planet of this type within it! Super-Earths are hugely interesting for this reason, but one might then say, well, is it really 'Earth-like' given all this?"

He added: "When we look at the type of star Kepler-452b orbits, then it seems to be a star not too dissimilar to our Sun... The other Kepler habitable zone planets that have been discovered so far tend to be orbiting M-dwarfs - stars far cooler than our Sun, and therefore the planets need to orbit much closer to receive the same levels of heating.

"So it may be a potentially rocky super-Earth in an Earth-like orbit (in terms of host star and orbital distance). It's this combination of the host star and orbit that set it apart in my opinion."

[norbs]

Hard to post an article because it was just announced a few mins ago (2am Friday morn)... I'm guessing by the time some of you wake up, there will be some news articles that have popped up.

Anyway, the Kepler team have just announced they have found a good earth 2.0 candidate. Almost the exact same distance from its star as we are from ours. Their star is the same size as ours too. Very good chance the exo-planet is rocky, and has water and an atmosphere. It is about 2x the size of earth though.

From memory it's called Kepler 352b. About 11,000 light years away.

So, in theory, it might be gone.

[DexterPunk]

Yeah that always blows my mind. Amazing stuff!

[smithcorp]

Apparently most planets >1.6 times Earth size are gaseous rather than rocky. I wonder, is there some relationship between distance from the star and the likelihood of a planet being gaseous or rocky? With the exception of Pluto, which might be a captured object, the closer ones in our solar system are rocky and the more distant are gaseous.

Earth has a lot of serendipity about it - has a Moon which hoovers up most of the rocks that might crash into us, and we have massive planets like Jupiter and Saturn that eat up most big objects coming into our system. We are pretty well protected - there must be a range of conditions like this that increase the chances of identified planets potentially being habitable. Is there a checklist NASA uses?

[DexterPunk]

Earth has a lot of serendipity about it - has a Moon which hoovers up most of the rocks that might crash into us, and we have massive planets like Jupiter and Saturn that eat up most big objects coming into our system. We are pretty well protected - there must be a range of conditions like this that increase the chances of identified planets potentially being habitable. Is there a checklist NASA uses?

Indeed. There are a number of variables. They went into how they try and narrow it down. But it's not very easy for them to find planets. They have to watch the brightness of a star dip while a planet moves in front of it. Then they have to confirm it several times, so it can take a few years to find a planet like ours at the same distance to a star that we are to our sun.

What does my head in, is they have found this situation relatively close. In our own Galaxy. There are still at least 100 billion stars in our own Galaxy. That number in itself is kind of hard for humans to quantify in a meaningful way. I remember I saw online once, a really good demo of the size of one million. 100 billion though... Then we are only one Galaxy floating around with at least 100 billion others (this is what Hubble has seen so far)... Probably of various sizes but all containing their own groups of 100+ billion stars. The numbers are just mind boggling. Then how many stars have accompanying planets? NASA seems to think most stars have a solar system. So what ever this mind bending number of stars is (Google suggests it's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) do we mutiply that by 8? Maybe 10? To get the number of planets to search?

I actually think there's no way we are the only ones in the universe.

[wobblysauce]

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has a camera so powerful that it is able to photograph the Curiosity rover from orbit. Here is the latest such image in enhanced colour



'Yep, that little white dot at centre frame is Curiosity. The resolution is 25 centimetres per pixel, so Curiosity should appear to be ~12 pixels across, given that it's about 290 centimetres on its longest dimension.'

[DexterPunk]

Sweeeeeet!

[wobblysauce]

[wobblysauce]

[Big Kev]

Bigger more enhanced version of that Pluto shot here. 8000x8000 px

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files ... elease.png

Very cool.

[Exar Kun]

I brought that pic up on my screen at work the other day and it was amazing how many people crowded around to have a look. Just so cool.

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[durbster]

NASA have announced a press conference for Monday suggesting they may have solved one of the "mysteries of Mars". No doubt it'll be about a rock or something, but there was some a discussion around photographic evidence of what could have been running water a few days ago, which would be a bit special.

[norbs]

Can you imagine reentering the atmosphere in that!

[wobblysauce]

And more of the story if you do not know about a international treaty signed in 1967.

Here’s why NASA’s Mars rovers are banned from investigating that liquid water
http://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-why- ... quid-water

[Duke]

[Big Kev]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectap ... ive/albums

[norbs]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectap ... ive/albums

That has had me mesmerised for hours. So cool.

[Duke]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectap ... ive/albums

That has had me mesmerised for hours. So cool.

Yer that's some unbelievable shots of stage sets & props...

[Duke]

Bing's desktop image today is Curiosity on Mt Sharp, Mars.

[r8response]

https://vimeo.com/139407849

[Big Kev]

[richo]

I know Curiosity has been there for awhile but it still blows me away that you can jump on the net and grab footage from another planet. Go Nasa and go smarty pants everywhere!

[DexterPunk]

Bing's desktop image today is Curiosity on Mt Sharp, Mars.

[img]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/697/22067737605_fc5a49dfe7_h.jpg[/img]

Sweet! It's a cool pic. I've had that on my work computer for the last 6 months or so.

What's the Bing desktop thingo?


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