PakledHostage

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this show yet:

I will have to look for references but maybe someone here remembers as well: IIRC, Huygens was designed to use Cassini as a relay for its communication with Earth during its descent to Titan's surface, but the DSN was able to continue to receive telemetry directly from Huygens after Cassini went over the horizon (from Huygens' perapective) and Cassini could no longer relay data. What blows me away about that is that Huygens' transmitter was about as powerful as a cell phone and we were picking it up through Titan's atmosphere and then from a further billion plus km away. Kinda puts the DSN's receiver capabilities into perspective...

I am wondering how long it will be before more posts get deleted from this thread... because apparently it is verboten to discuss whether manned spaceflight makes sense in a thread about manned missions to Mars.

Which one? The tie fighters or Nibiru?

You guys may be getting tired of photos of the ISS transiting various solar system bodies but I had an opportunity to photograph the ISS transiting the moon this morning, right from my porch, so I couldn't pass it up. I think it would have been a better image if the moon had been closer to full, because I suspect that the ISS' solar panels were aligned towards the Sun so they weren't as prominent in this composite as they were in my picture from the other week of the ISS transiting the Sun. Also, if the moon had been closer to full, I'd probably have had a better angle on the illuminated face of the solar panels so they'd probably have shown up better in the photos. That said, timing the shot of a lunar transit is a lot easier than a solar transit because you can see the ISS coming with the naked eye, a long time in advance. Anyways, here's the photo:

I like the Monty Python references.

So they're like the Borg?!

FWIW, just because we disagree with your position doesn't mean we are "hostile" to it... You may well prove to be right, and by the sounds of it you have more on the line than most of us. But it also isn't unreasonable to argue in favor of taking a conservative position.

I guess we'll see... I hope for their sake that you are right.

Very true. And from what I can see from the news and other footage that is leaking out, it is naive to regard this storm as "just another hurricane". Look at what happened to St. Martin: There is hardly any vegetation left. Modern concrete buildings have been ripped open like tin cans... Another video doesn't look like wind, it looks like turbofan exhaust: Having been to St Martin many times, I am flabbergasted by the destruction.

I suspect that Lego is going to be very conservative for the next couple of years. They just announced that they are laying off 8% of their global workforce (1400 jobs) in response to poor sales figures. Ref. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/business/lego-sales-toys.html, (or if you consider The New York Times to be "fake news", Ref. http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/09/05/lego-to-cut-8-percent-its-staff-as-sales-drop.html)

I've been feeling a bit of a 'post eclipse hangover' the past couple of weeks, so upon finding this site: http://transit-finder.com/, I decided to go out and try my luck at catching an image of the ISS silhouetted in the disk of the Sun. I think my timing was out by about 1/2 second so I didn't manage the sequence that I'd hoped for, but I did catch the ISS down near the Sun's lower left limb in the photo below (photo has been re-sized to 50% of its original resolution): Here's a closer view cropped out of the same shot (1:1 crop from the original image): I shot it using a 600 mm lens mounted on a Canon 70D camera body, with a Thousand Oaks solar filter mounted on the lens. I'd be really interested to see what some of you guys with proper telescopes and astro-imaging equipment could pull off.

What about the 2019 total eclipse? Or the 2020 total eclipse? Or even the (much harder to get to) 2021 total eclipse?

Here's my photo of the "diamond ring" effect, 1 or 2 seconds before totality. You can just make out Regulus in the lower right of the image, about 2 solar diameters away: As I mentioned in the Astro Imaging thread over in the Science sub-forum, I took all of my eclipse photos (including this one) by using a script in a program called "Eclipse Orchestrator" to control my camera during totality. I obtained the exposure settings for the script in advance from a table on Fred Espenak's (a.k.a Mr. Eclipse's) web page. I also used a GPS and time synchronization tool to set my computer's position and time to within a few metres and milliseconds of actual. This allowed the script to capture phenomena at each end of totality, as well as a two 12-stop exposure sequences during totality.

You mean before? The moon is on the wrong side of the Sun for it to be after...

I just got home last night from my eclipse viewing vacation so I am only now getting around to posting this image, but I think you guys here will like it. (I know that there is a separate eclipse thread, but I thought that readers here would appreciate it more than lounge readers.) Anyway, I took it by using a script in a program called "Eclipse Orchestrator" to control my camera during totality. I obtained the exposure settings for the script in advance from a table on Fred Espenak's (a.k.a Mr. Eclipse's) web page. I also used a GPS and time synchronization tool to set my computer's position and time to within a few metres and milliseconds of actual. This allowed the script to capture phenomena at each end of totality, as well as a two 12-stop exposure sequences during totality. The image below shows what some people are calling "the dolphin prominence" at the top-right edge of the sun's disk:

You might be able to replace the screen. Google your laptop model to see what comes up. And if you (or your parents, depending on your age) have insurance, you might be able to get the cost of the repair covered. It is worth asking anyway. Or if you (or your parents) bought the laptop with a credit card, the credit card may have purchase protection insurance that will cover the repair or replacement. Again, it is worth asking.

I couldn't agree more. As much as I like the idea of electric cars for around town, I think they are still impractical for a lot of potential purchasers. Two of my friends have electric cars - one a Tesla Model S and one a Kia Soul. Both owners suffer range anxiety. And as much as I enjoy riding in those vehicles as a passenger, I wouldn't buy one. From my friends' experience, their range suffers in cold weather and road trips take a lot longer. Given that I use my car mostly in cold weather and for road trips, it pretty much rules out an EV. I also don't think much of the current crop of hybrids. While they reduce emissions from vehicles stuck in slow moving traffic, stopped at traffic lights and waiting in the drive through lineup, they aren't really any different than a conventional ICE powered car on the highway. Their maintenance cost/hassle is higher than other vehicles too. The additional parts count and complex transmission required to route power to the wheels from both an electric motor and gasoline engine bears a maintenance cost. The option that Bill Phill mentions, on the other hand, sounds very practical to me. You'd get all the benefits of an electric car, while maintaining your range on the highway and in cold weather. The generator wouldn't require a transmission, could be run at its peak efficiency and wouldn't have to be very big. I have rolled my hatchback Mazda 3 down a hill in neutral (kids, don't try this at home - it is illegal in a lot of jurisdictions) to get a sense of how much power it takes, and it worked out to about 25 HP to maintain 120 km/h on flat ground. A small generator would keep you going on the highway pretty much indefinitely while the battery pack would have more than enough in reserve for climbing hills, passing other vehicles and short trips around town.

I used my 20 megapixel Canon 70D with a Sigma 150-600 mm lens mounted on it. Fully zoomed in and mounted on an APS-C sensor camera, that lens has a field of view of about 2.5° x 1.5°. The ISS passed almost directly overhead that night, so it was as pretty much as close as it could ever be when I took the photo. It was on the order of 1 arc minute across in the image. The picture I posted was cropped down to 640 x 480 but not resized. Shooting without a tripod at that focal length is tough, but I bumped up the ISO (to yield a quicker shutter speed) and turned on the image stabilisation to improve my odds of getting a sharp image. I also used automatic exposure bracketing to shoot a range of exposures. Ultimately, I think getting the right exposure is the most challenging thing about photographing the ISS. There seems to be so much variation in brightness over it's expanse, that parts of the image are blown out while other parts are only barely visible. I think there is room for improvement though. It could be sharper and better exposed but this was only my first try. I will try again. Edit: For what it is worth, the settings were 1/400 f/8 ISO 800

Not really an astro-image but I thought I'd share anyway. I took the photo below this evening. It is the ISS passing almost directly overhead. I have to work on more smoothly hand-holding the camera and getting the right exposure settings, but I am happy with this result from my first try:

I found this on Google Play: I'd describe it as "Mission Control's 'In The Shadow of the Moon'". We're fortunate that these guys' stories and memories are being recorded for posterity as the Apollo program and the people who made it happen rapidly recede into history.

For anyone who's interested, they've now made their Android app available on Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ideum.com.megamovie). It will be useful for anyone who intendeds to be within the path of totality as it displays times of the 4 contacts (C1-C4) down to the second, computed based on your actual location. There will be more features added as August approaches, too.

If the ISS crew is in position to see the umbra then those within the umbra might also be able to see the ISS go by? It will be dark enough to see stars and planets, after all? Maybe it'll be something for eclipse viewers in Wyoming and/or Nebraska to keep an eye out for? Edit: Of course this far out, I imagine that orbital perturbations will still have enough of an effect on the ISS' exact position that day that this speculation may be meaningless...

I saw the same 1999 total eclipse as Green Barron, only from a spot about 200 km further east and I would have to agree with all the hype: Totality is mind blowing. It is almost supernatural. I think you'd have to be a poet to really be able to capture it in words but "supernatural" is the best single word description that I can think of. I have never felt so profoundly insignificant. I was fortunate enough to have clear skies that day even though there were lots of towering cumulus clouds around. Those towering cumulus enhanced the effect of the onrushing umbra because you could see it coming from/receding to dozens of kilometers away. The speed and size of it was humbling. I remember saying afterwards that I understood now why eclipses invoked such fear in ancient peoples. It got dark at mid day, the wind stopped, it got noticably cooler, the birds stopped singing, the street lights came on, the roosters were crowing after totality ended... and at the centre of it all, there was this spectacular corona surrounding a black hole in the sky where the Sun should have been. It was otherworldly.

Oregon. My family and I will be joined by one of my best friends and his family so I am expecting to have a good time... There will be plenty of Corona.