Cool astronomy photos

[Anaxagoras]

Not a photo, but the latest theory about a large undiscovered planet in the outer solar system.

(They call it "Planet 9" but we all know who the real Planet 9 is. HONK!!)


(link for full-size image)

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-planet.html

[Bruce]

Way out there in too far away to give a shit territory.

It's like the Florida region of the solar system.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Planet 9 -- Pluto -- HONK.
Planet 10 -- Eris -- HONK.
Planet 11 -- Quaoar -- HONK.
Planet 12 -- Makemake -- HONK.

However the Jovians an Saturnians will call the new one Planet 5. The previously known solar system consisting of 4 planets + a mess of random debris of various kinds.

[Abdul Alhazred]

If we're going by order of discovery, Planet 9 is the world Ceres (thank you Isaac Asimov) and Pluto is Planet 10.

[Rob Lister]

Planet 9 (or an orbit around it) is a good location for a gravitational lensing telescope.

https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-plane ... 180962499/

[Witness]

Sharpest Ultima Thule

On January 1, New Horizons swooped to within 3,500 kilometers of the Kuiper Belt world known as Ultima Thule. That's about 3 times closer than its July 2015 closest approach to Pluto. The spacecraft's unprecedented feat of navigational precision, supported by data from ground and space-based observing campaigns, was accomplished 6.6 billion kilometers (over 6 light-hours) from planet Earth. Six and a half minutes before closest approach to Ultima Thule it captured the nine frames used in this composite image. The most detailed picture possible of the farthest object ever explored, the image has a resolution of about 33 meters per pixel, revealing intriguing bright surface features and dark shadows near the terminator. A primitive Solar System object, Ultima Thule's two lobes combine to span just 30 kilometers. The larger lobe, referred to as Ultima, is recently understood to be flattened like a fluffy pancake, while the smaller, Thule, has a shape that resembles a dented walnut.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190228.html

[Anaxagoras]

Planet 9 (or an orbit around it) is a good location for a gravitational lensing telescope.

https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-plane ... 180962499/

I like the idea but of course once you get out that far, you can't just point the telescope at anything. You can only look at what is in a more-or-less straight line on the opposite side of the sun. It would take a long time to reposition the telescope to look at a new target.

[Doctor X]

We already have nine planets.

HONK!

--J.D.

[Rob Lister]

Planet 9 (or an orbit around it) is a good location for a gravitational lensing telescope.

https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-plane ... 180962499/

I like the idea but of course once you get out that far, you can't just point the telescope at anything. You can only look at what is in a more-or-less straight line on the opposite side of the sun. It would take a long time to reposition the telescope to look at a new target.

My understanding is that objects on a direct line are focused perfectly while objects on a slight tangent are distorted to the degree of the angle; skewed like a fisheye lens... or barrel maybe.

But even with an ever-so-slight tangent, given the 100m lightyear distances in question, that's a lot of objects in good-enough focus worth studying.

If we launched today, our great-grandkids could work out the pointing details. And they'd thank us!

[Anaxagoras]

New Video Shows the Critical Moment Hayabusa2 Fired a Bullet Into Ryugu Asteroid

Hope there's not a protomolecule hidden in there and we just unwittingly declared war on aliens.

[Doctor X]

The "Black" will save us, Anax, keh?

--J.D.

[Witness]

A map to Planet Nine: Charting the solar system’s most distant worlds

A newfound dwarf planet named Farfarout is now the most distant known object in the solar system. And depending on its orbital path, it may help bolster the case for the mysterious Planet Nine.

Last December, a trio of astronomers set the record for the most distant object ever discovered in the solar system. Because the small world is located about three times farther from the Sun than Pluto, the researchers dubbed it Farout. Now, not to be outdone (even by themselves), the same group of boundary pushers have announced the discovery of an even more far-flung object. And since the new find sits a couple billion miles farther out than Farout, the team has fittingly nicknamed it Farfarout.

The discovery of Farfarout, which is about 140 astronomical units from the Sun (where 1 AU equals the distance between Earth and the Sun), is quite impressive by its own right. But Farfarout and its nearer sibling are not just record-breakers, they could be trend-setters. Depending on how their orbits shake out, the two may add to a growing pile of evidence that hints at the existence of an elusive super-Earth lurking in the fringes of our solar system: Planet Nine.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/03/a ... ant-worlds for details.

[Witness]

NGC 6052, a galaxy merger (Hubble photo):



Details: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... reddit.com