Posts Tagged ‘astronomy’

Speed of light, huh? Hmmm. Speed of light, indeed.

This is just way too cool not to share.

Will try to write more and sidestep the depression a bit, but until then… this quickie post will have to do. It presents WATT friend and reader (!) LunaCognita’s latest film, an unprecedented proper look at the footage of the lift off of the Lunar Module from the end of the Apollo 11 mission. He pretty much explains what’s what with it below, but, do note that near to and again at the end of this clip there are two unidentified objects seen landing… and they both land… in the very same spot!

I am fond of saying that the further from Earth we go, the weirder things get in a general sense. You’ll never convince me of otherwise. Ever. This object is just the latest in the ever-so-wacky universe that lies way, way, “out there.”

About the only thing agreed upon so far is that it isn’t a comet, based solely on composition… it’s assumed to be the result of a high speed asteroidal hit-and-run.

What the heck is that? I just knew you’d ask. This JPL image is a crop I chopped from the “full-res” image number N00121336 taken by the Cassini mission to Saturn, the top right catches a bit of the moon Enceladus. The thing at center left is, as you might imagine, unidentified. [...]

Oh, I do think ‘ole Charlie Fort would’ve loved this… talk about odd falls! Ha! I’m lovin’ it. [...]

In this video, Warp Speed?, by Lunar Explorer Italia, a fascinating view is presented of something very strange indeed. It would appear to be an object of some sort moving at an apparently superluminal rate. This has been captured for us by the Cassini probe that’s hanging out over by Saturn. I keep stopping and playing back the first third of the clip, as in the last two thirds our friends at Lunar Explorer Italia have added in visual aids to help us see where the action is… which is okay of course but I think it distracts. [...]

Yahoo! News reports on an amateur astronomer’s discovery and imaging of a massive wound in Jupiter’s atmosphere, presumably caused by an asteroid… and a pretty big asteroid it must have been. I wonder what went on below the clouds… I imagine it was probably crushed pretty well… wonder why the image is inverted to negative… perhaps to show the blackness of the hole. [...]

[...] Actually, as it happens, after some very cursory examinations it was indeed determined to be “most likely a hoax” due solely to the straightness of the lines above and the oddly colorful labeling on the images, by the very same guy who popularized the “snake” I posted on a while ago. I don’t know, those things don’t really bother me… The unidentified individual known only as “The Nightstalker” did the most actual work on it and came up with an ESA launch called A 502… and the late Kent Steadman tried his hand, too, so… for me… [...]

[...] Quite a few think it’s a piece of the lander, a piece of its antenna, claiming that Russians built only junk that fell apart. That’s well beyond patently ludicrous. Just how frakken stupid can people be? [...]

And to our left just below is the headquarters of Copernican Mining Co., Ltd., that looney lunar leader in processing titanium and fine minerals… (ahem) yes… this was snapped in 1967 by the Lunar Orbiter 5 probe as it soared over the crater Copernicus.

The team of wacky space boffins at Lunar Explorer Italia have done it again. This time, they’ve spied on some interlopers and holidaymakers at the pretty ball known as Saturn and specifically at it’s rings. Yeah, tourists are simply everywhere.

Looks like a simple case of “asleep at the wheel” to me… and fortunately two Colombian skywatchers caught the dude in the act as he/she/it nearly gets themselves blown to smithereens by the mindlessly hurtling asteroid known to us Earthers as 2009 DD 45.