Can You Find the Comet? (apod.nasa.gov)

61 points by ColinWright a day ago

albert_e an hour ago

Why are satellite trails npt continuous lines

Is the camera exposure taking a few seconds of break between takes that get stacked later with some "missing" moments in between?

debugnik 29 minutes ago

My guess is the camera itself was taking photos of shorter exposure and the final image was composed in post-production, yes.

originalvichy 3 hours ago

I fear this is only the start of it. A minimum of 3-4 constellations more will probably be launched in the near future (Russia, China, EU).

Their obvious dual-use nature makes them tempting, and a military target if a large conflict will take place in the near future. I hope their lower orbit will help any space junk burn up fast.

ragebol 3 hours ago

Yeah, I kinda get why astronomers are not particularly happy with satellite constellations.

adev_ 2 hours ago

And this is just the visible spectrum.

The situation is one order of magnitude worst in radio-astronomy.

It is fair to state that satellite constellations will certainly be the main obstacle to multiple major scientific discoveries in the next decade.

ultratalk 2 hours ago

Opinion: We need to move our astronomical observation equipment off of Earth and onto other bodies, especially radio astronomy, which, unlike telescopes that operate in other wavelengths, is still affected by Earth's emissions in LEO/near-Earth space. We should put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon [0] to benefit from the thousands of kilometers of lunar material separating Earth's emissions from telescopes.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO50100.2021.9438165

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope

Aboutplants a few seconds ago

adrian_b an hour ago

maxnoe an hour ago

christophilus an hour ago

ciroduran 3 hours ago

I'm rebuilding my RSS feed collection, and having pretty astronomy pictures is a fine addition. Thanks!

gasi 3 hours ago

So cool! Zoom in to find out: https://zoomhub.net/0w8pN

aa-jv an hour ago

Hot take: We're in the first stages of building our own Dyson sphere and therefore comets are only useful in the context of capturing them for that purpose.

;)

w-ll 4 hours ago

if i could imagine what a Sophon from 3 body problem would look like. this is kind of it.

khazhoux 2 hours ago

Is this all / mostly Starlink?

vednig 2 hours ago

It's a set of network satellites for sure either by Eutelsat or Starlink in 70:20 ratio 10% being other providers

But all of them being LEO for sure.

renerick 3 hours ago

That looks so cool, ngl!