LaydeeDem

very few exoplanets are found through direct imaging. producing a lightcurve doesn't necessarily require a lot of aperture

Got my hands on a Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM lens in July. Lets in lots of light and is pretty sharp when stopped down to f/3. Have been a very busy bee since! Galaxies of Mirach The Serpent's Tail The Southern Crown: Cygnus: From Cepheus to Vulpecula Dark Nebulae in Cygnus & Cepheus: Any my crowning achievement for the Summer, an image worth printing; Farewell Fire: Excited for the Winter Skies now. Clear skies all!

Whew it's been a while! I promise I'm not dead. Just been really busy. Not a lot of time to play KSP let alone get out and shoot That said I have been enjoying the return of the summer skies. Even ordered a new lens for Milky Way season, it hasn't arrived yet though. The Great Rift: The Great Rift is an area of dark bands stretching from the constellation Cygnus to the constellation Centaurus. They are thought to be clouds of interstellar dust in our galaxy's spiral arms. Two satellites can be seen crossing the sky in this mosaic. The first (bottom left) is likely USA 182 aka Lacrosse 5, a radar reconnaissance satellite and the second (center) is likely a spent stage from the Soviet Zenit-2 rocket that launched Cosmos 1697, a Tselina-2 radio surveillance satellite. Info and Fullres: May 14 Daytime Moon: https://flic.kr/p/2fViZAK Daytime view of the waxing gibbous moon from 5-14. Visible towards the lunar terminator is the Moon's "golden handle", caused by mountain peaks on the western end of Sinus Irdium being illuminated by sunlight. Stack of ~14 individual frames. Stacked using AutoStakkert! 2 with 1.5x drizzle and sharpened using RegiStax. Taken with a Canon 350D with a 75-300mm lens at f/11. Proof you don't need a lot of aperture to squeeze some detail out of the Moon! And best for last, a nice zoomed in view of the Milky Way Core from a few nights ago. My first attempt doing RAW conversion for astrophoto work in RawTherapee! I love the control it gives me. Milky Way Core Widefield: Annotated Version: Image Info:

Summer skies are finally coming back! \o/ Stayed up til dawn to get the Milky Way about 2 weeks ago. I forgot how dang bright the MW is. You do NOT need a lot of integration time to get a good image of it! The above is a stack of 2x60" exposures. Image Details

Spoiled myself for my 21st birthday and bought a star tracker. My photos have improved immensely! Only problem is my wide lens has really bad coma. I have to do some heavy cropping to make these look good. I'm hoping purchasing a fast prime lens in the future will fix some of this. Also been playing with the PixInsight trial and holy crap it's powerful! The color calibration and ACDNR tools have allowed me to accomplish a lot more than Photoshop ever allowed. I'll definitely need to buy it when I have the cash! Orion & Friends: Image details: The Jewels of Taurus: Image details: Also got up early to capture Venus and Jupiter in conjunction on 1/16. Lots of ice particles in the air. Caused oval coronae around both and it started snowing! That's it for now. Clear skies everyone.

Looks like the lobes are less spherical than we thought.

This is excellent! For an object that's darker than asphalt in some places, I think you've done a good job representing what MU69 might look like to human eyes. Color looks very close to the dark patches on both Pluto and Charon. It'll be exciting to see if this expectation holds true as new data is down-linked and released to the public. Bi-lobed bodies appear to be very common in the solar system. Not just MU69 and Pluto's moons, but also several comets: 67P/C-G, 1P/Halley, 19P/Borelly, 103P/Hartley... etc. This paper suggests that these kinds of bodies actually form this way, precipitating as a binary pair and then eventually collapsing due to orbital decay to form the bi-lobed shape we see today. Such collisions would have happened at incredibly low velocities. On the order of 70-90 cm/s, a little over half the average human walking speed. (Drawing by James Tuttle Keane) As mentioned by @lajoswinkler these bodies have the consistency of graupel. They're like the outer solar system's version of "rubble piles" a la Ryugu or Bennu. These pairs likely would accrete into a single mass if their interiors hadn't undergone sufficient cohesion yet. For bi-lobes like MU69 or 67P, this suggest there was quite some time between the formation and the collapse of the binary pair. Long enough for radioactive heating to reinforce the interiors of the two lobes, at least.

This is a good point about the current color images of MU69. The "enhanced" images are false color images that include wavelengths the human eye can't detect. Assembled from Near-Infrared, Red and Blue filter images. (NIR data assigned to the red channel, Red data assigned to the green channel, Blue data assigned to the blue channel). I produced a graphic illustrating this a little while ago using New Horizon's MVIC data and images from Himawari 9's AHI. (All processing by me so any errors are my own) "Natural" Color* vs New Horizon's "Enhanced Color" *Note that the "natural color" images still aren't a perfect representation of what the human eye would see. The green filter of Himawari 9's AHI has a different green spectral response than the human eye and Near-infrared data had to be blended in to the green channel order to bring some green back to Earth's vegetation. New Horizons' MVIC doesn't have a green filter at all. The green channel was synthesized by combining blue and red filter images. But all in all they should be at least a close-ish representation of what the human eye would see.** **My interpretation of Pluto is still a little on the brown/red end. I haven't had time to update these graphics so defer to these images by Alex Parker for a better "natural color" interpretation of Pluto: https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/102032630097883955

Great shot! Thank you! Another, better shot of 46P/Wirtanen taken on 12-11. Was more prepared to shoot in the cold this time. Definitely getting closer and brighter now. Was able to spot it with averted vision on the night I shot this. Last night when I was watching the Geminids with my GF I was able to spot it clearly even with the Moon. Fingers and toes crossed for clear skies and good seeing on the 16th. Weather has taken quite a wintry turn as of late, this might end up being my best shot of comet Wirtanen. On the plus side, taking advantage of every clear sky I get has given me an excuse to try out the new tripod I got for Christmas early. Naughty me. Image Details:

Modded some space potatoes into the game. Tsyke, a big metal asteroid supposed to be an analogue to the IRL asteroid 16 Psyche. Ridge, a tiny moonlet in a placeholder orbit around Tsyke until I can figure out where to put it. Only 2.4 km across. Shaped like a ravioli. Trojar, a Jool Trojan asteroid. Haven't got the orbit right yet but it should work when I do. Especially with the Principia mod maybe. Jeb discovered that Trojar has a big hole in it like the Mohole. Perfect for throwing sacrifices to the Kraken in. Sacrifice: One (1) Kerbug-I and one (1) Jebediah Kerman. Hopefully the Kraken finds it worthy. Suddenly, it happens. Jeb begins to vibrate violently as he phases out of existence! The Kraken is pleased. "Gene, I don't feel so good" - Jeb Kerman to Mission Control

Hi, I'd like to have my name changed to LaydeeDem please. I'd very much appreciate it.

Fixing the memory problems would be nice.

Which one keeps both Relativity and Causality intact? Pick two: Relativity Causality FTL

Link to the paper on a site that isn't blocked by a paywall: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.10621.pdf Interesting stuff.

Lots of clouds and frigid temperatures lately, but I managed to catch a break with clear skies the last two nights. Managed to catch comet 46P/Wirtanen on its way towards perihelion on 12-4. According to CalSky it was at magnitude 6.1, just outside the visual range for most people's eyes. Thought I might have sighted it visually with averted vision, though I was likely seeing the nearby 5th-magnitude stars or fog on my glasses lol. Image details: The next night I was more prepared to shoot in the cold. Some high altitude clouds were blocking Wirtanen so I turned my sights towards Orion. Used my faster, longer focal length lens to try and capture some of the nebulae in the belt and sword regions of Orion. Managed to catch the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024), the Running Man (NGC 1977) and the Great Orion Nebula (M42). Thought I might have gotten hints of the Horsehead however it's so faint it's hard to distinguish it from the splotchy artifacts that appear in other low-signal areas. Image Details: After taking a satisfying amount of images at a wide focal length, I centered my camera on M42 and zoomed to 300mm focal length for some satellite hunting. Geostationary satellites often cross in front of M42 so I took a series of long exposure "star trail" images in an attempt to find some. I managed to find four, along with another sat I couldn't identify. Same as before but in timelapse video format. Includes the unidentified sat: Image Details: Cheers.

Needed to put a probe in a <60 degree orbit around the Sun. So I put my smallest probe on my biggest rocket and sent it towards Jool. This makes the first interplanetary mission for my career mode save. (1.4.5) The Juno-II Heavy on the pad with KERMES (KERbol Magnetic Environment Sensor) Fairing Sep: KERMES after TJI flying near the Mun: TJI occured at a less-than-optimal phase angle, however the craft contains enough dV to cover for any losses that might of incurred. Final trajectory: (Principia nearly grinds KSP to a halt rendering orbits this long in period. My poor computer!) Hopefully the probe has enough EC and comms to communicate once at Jool. It'll be vital for the maneuver at Jool periapsis and for collecting sweet science from the planet while we're there.

Another Moonshot. More adventures in pulling detail out of my tiny 300mm lens. Image Info: The Moon on 11/14/18. Image is nearly true color, but the saturation has been boosted significantly to show subtle color variations in the Lunar surface. Blue regions, like the Sea of Tranquility, are more rich in titanium, while red areas are titanium-poor and contain iron. Acquisition and processing details:

They look copied because they are, but not due to fraud. Read my previous post: They're using other, non-infrared observations to build and refine their model. The technique is discussed in great detail here and cited in several subsequent papers. A little weird that the NEOWISE team would so openly discuss their "scientific misconduct".

I'm not trying to say that professionals or even scientific consensus is infallible. But if your goal is to upend the current line of thinking, you better do a darn good job. From what I've read, Myrvold hasn't. The evidence (Radar images, occultations, spacecraft visits, IRAS data, Akari data) favors NEOWISE.

Fascinating, but after reading more on this, I'm not sure Dr. Myrvold's claims and (very serious) accusations hold weight. Some relevant information: Myrvold's model fails to predict the diameters of asteroids with known size. Data from IRAS and the Japanese Akari spacecraft corroborate the NEOWISE team's results Ground-based occultation data corroborates the NEOWISE team's results, not Myrvold's His claims of fraud are unfounded, unprofessional, and more importantly, wrong. Including results from other observations to improve the accuracy of the model =! fraud. Now, I'm even more of an armchair astronomer than Myrvold, the extent of my knowledge is a semester of Astronomy 101 and some books on amateur differential photometry, but if you want my uneducated opinion as a layperson: He's wrong, and like other "contrarians" (wannabe Galileo's imo), suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect and believes himself to be more qualified than the people who actually spend their lives studying what he's critiquing. His paper can be summed up as an error-riddled complaint about "spherical cows". Asteroids have incredibly complex surfaces. Of course the NEOWISE team's model simplifies things. The team is well aware of the simplifications they're making. The question then is whether the model approximates reality. And it does, pretty well.

Was reading this one the other day: "MAGNETOUR: Surfing Planetary Systems on Electromagnetic and Multi-Body Gravity Fields" https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Lantoine_2012_Ph1_MAGNETOUR.pdf

Direct imaging of an exoplanet's surface is no small feat. It's comparable to observing the Apollo LEM on the Moon from the surface of the Earth. To do it at all requires a massive aperture. To do it and get a reasonable amount of detail requires an even bigger one. However there is a way to do it, and cheaply too! No need for massive mirrors or flying out to 550 AU. I'm actually surprised Aragoscopes haven't been mentioned yet. Rather than use a mirror as a collecting surface, instead an opaque disk or ring would be deployed in front of the spacecraft. It seems a little counter-intuitive, but since light's wave-like nature causes it to diffract, the brightest part of the shadow is actually in the middle. Place a detector + relevant optics at this spot (the Arago spot), and you've essentially created a telescope for very cheap. It scales too! According to this study, Aragoscopes from 100m to 1,000m were shown to be feasible, with a 100m Aragoscope being possible with what's usually budgeted for flagship class missions (Though we all know from JWST that those estimates tend to be a little low). But the science it would allow would open up a whole new world of astronomy. A 1km Aragoscope + accompanying Starshade observing in visible light would be able to resolve Jupiter's disk and the Galilean moons from 7 parsecs away. Resolution gets better as you move towards the UV/X-ray end of the spectrum too, so such telescopes could potentially be used to directly image the event horizons of black holes such as Sagittarius A* and the BH in M87. The big issues with this design would be the need for very high-accuracy pointing due to the long focal length and the low contrast created by the obstructing disk. However I think these issues are likely to be solved within the next few decades. Until then we can watch Cody'sLab at least.

I wouldn't call anyone who doesn't use it or doesn't need it elitist. I myself don't use it so that'd be a little silly.

Only skimmed through the thread, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents as someone who's been playing since 2011: When it first came out I used to be really elitist about Mechjeb use. I considered it "cheating" and a "crutch". But through the years I've come to change my opinion: There's literally nothing wrong with using Mechjeb. To say otherwise is just gatekeeping which is never productive. I really don't see a point in discouraging certain playstyles. It's your game. Play how you like! No one should be able to take that away from you or think less of you because of that.

View from my latest resupply mission to Kerbolab: