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Retrocausal Quantum Switch
Any science fiction nerds in here?
In theory this experiment would receive information from the future.
The image at the bottom was taken from the following video and is the first of 3 ideas for the experiment.
The Further Adventures of Betelgeuse, the Fainting Star
The red supergiant is no closer to exploding, it seems. It also no longer appears round.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/science/betelgeuse-pictures-supernova.html
My Telescope Setup for Astrophotography
When I setup my telescope, I found it important to be accurate with the initial steps.
My telescope setup begins with finding north.
The tripod and mount must have good polar alignment. I use a smartphone app to identify where north is located.
The second step is leveling the tripod. The mount I have is a GEM (German Equatorial Mount) so it has to sit on a level tripod on order to begin to come close to tracking the night sky. I use a traditional level I purchased from the hardware store.
Next the setup must be balanced after I install the mount, telescope, weights and camera. For this in each direction of motion I unlock the mount and adjust the weights or telescope assembly till it doesn't move without a push.
In long exposure astrophotography, I installed a motor to the RA of the mount. No I don't have a fancy electronic GoTo mount. This hobby can be very expensive. In order to complete the final steps, this motor is needed to dial in the polar alignment accuracy of the setup.
All of these steps will give you pictures like this:
M42 The Great Orion Nebula and Running Man Nebula
it's easy to do with the moon, just hold a digital camera to the eyepiece as steady as possible, and shoot a bunch of photos......most will be blurry, but a few should turn out OK....
here are a few I took with the camera holder, and a few different filters:
I have something like this, but for the transit of Venus, I just held the camera to the eyepiece, since I was also doing some visual observing.....
http://www.telescope.com/Astrophotography/Camera-Adapters-T-Rings/Orion-SteadyPix-Universal-Camera-Mount/pc/-1/c/4/sc/62/p/5228.uts
PS:
The afocal method is a posh name for a simple thing- it means just putting the camera up to the eyepiece and taking the picture.
Afocal photography can be done using any camera, but digital cameras are best for this method (see my camera guide) because you get the chance to see the photo immediately and you can quickly learn from your mistakes and pick up the technique. You can't use ordinary digital cameras for all astrophotography methods as they can't do long exposures, but with the afocal method only short exposures are required.
This method is good for photographing the moon and planets. The moon is the best place to start, it's easy to find and very bright, which makes photographing it very easy. The moon only requires exposures smilar to daylight (1/250th-1/30th) so experiment to find the best exposure (or, especially if you're using film, heres a good exposure guide). Pictures of a half or crescent moon look better than pictures of the full moon, because the light casts shadows on the moon's craters.
http://www.astronomyforbeginners.com/astrophotography/afocal.php
sunspots from the previous solar-max (Solar Cycle #23), taken on 9/21/2000......I took these with an ETX90 and solar filter, same telescope I used to capture the transit of Venus yesterday. The viewing conditions were much better for these pics over a decade ago:
my transit of Venus pic:
I took this with my telescope and a solar filter yesterday.....the weather was not the greatest, a thin haze of clouds, but got this pic during a brief clearing, although still a bit hazy.....
the haze didn't make for the best conditions, but lucky I got anything!!!!
some image enhancement was done (contrast, brightness adjustments, etc), but nothing added:
Out of this world: This amazing picture of Saturn was taken by the Cassini probe. If you look carefully, you can see planet Earth to the left, nestling just above the bright rings
Incredible picture of Saturn that runs rings around all the others (and if you look carefully, you'll see Earth in the distance)
By Ted Thornhill
Last updated at 5:16 PM on 7th September 2011
There have been some amazing photographs taken of Saturn over the years, but none quite like this.
The stunning image comes courtesy of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft while it was in orbit around the planet, which is the sixth furthest from the sun and lies around 800million miles from Earth.
It was taken at night as the probe looked back at the eclipsed sun, resulting in a picture that one Nasa astronomer described as ‘like no other’.
Here’s his explanation of why the image is so unusual: ‘First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system.
‘Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated colour image.
‘Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above.’
He also points out that, if you look very carefully, planet Earth can be seen to the left, just above the bright main rings.
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, one of the largest ever built, was launched in 1997 and has taken thousand of breath-taking photographs, as well as providing some remarkable scientific data.
In November 2006, for instance, it spied a storm on Saturn that makes Earth’s hurricanes look like gentle summer breezes.
Raging at the planet’s south pole was a storm measuring 5,000 miles across and 43 miles high, with winds peaking at 350mph. Cassini also discovered seven new moons in orbit around Saturn, bringing the total number to 62.
Cassini has spent some of its mission-time analysing Jupiter, too, taking a staggering 26,000 photographs of the giant planet. These led to a far greater understanding of its atmospheric conditions.
The probe’s mission will end when it is sent crashing into the surface of Saturn in 2017, sending back readings as it goes.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2034615/The-picture-Saturn-runs-rings-others.html#ixzz1XYxePqkp
The Shuttle Ends Its Final Voyage and an Era in Space
By KENNETH CHANG
The last space shuttle flight rolled to a stop just before 6 a.m. on Thursday, closing an era of the nation’s space program.
“Mission complete, Houston,” said Capt. Christopher J. Ferguson of the Navy, commander of the shuttle Atlantis for the last flight. “Afterserving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle has earned its place in history, and it’s come to a final stop.”
It was the 19th night landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to end the 135th space shuttle mission. For Atlantis, the final tally of its 26-year career: 33 missions, accumulating just short of 126 million miles during 307 days in space.
A permanent marker will be placed on the runway to indicate the final resting spot of the space shuttle program.
The last day in space went smoothly. Late on Wednesday night, the crew awoke to the Kate Smith version of “God Bless America.” With no weather or technical concerns, the crew closed the payload doors at 2:09 a.m. on Thursday.
At 4:13 a.m., Barry E. Wilmore, an astronaut at mission control in Houston, told the Atlantis crew, “Everything is looking fantastic, there you are go for the deorbit burn, and you can maneuver on time.”
“That’s great, Butch,” replied Captain Ferguson. “Go on the deorbit maneuver, on time.”
Thirty-six minutes later, as it was passing over Malaysia, the Atlantis fired its maneuvering engines for 3 minutes 16 seconds, slowing it down by 225 miles per hour and beginning the fall back into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The shuttle, which travels backward while in orbit, flipped around to a nose-first position. In the clear, windless predawn, sonic booms announced its impending arrival. It made a wide turn in preparation for the approach for its final landing.
During the 13-day mission, the Atlantis ferried 8,000 pounds of supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station. With the retirement of the shuttles, the space station will now rely on Russian, European and Japanese rockets to bring up supplies.
NASA is also counting on two commercial companies, the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif., and the Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., to begin cargo flights next year.
For Atlantis, NASA will now begin the work of transforming it into a museum piece. It will be mounted nearby at Kennedy’s visitor center.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/science/space/22space-shuttle-atlantis.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
for v much lower than c (the speed of light):
where
E= energy
m=mass
v=velocity
in other words, velocity matters much more than how much matter!!!!
PS: the relativistic version.....yikes!!!....a subatomic particle with the energy of a brick falling on your toe!!!!....about as close to c as can be.......
http://journal.batard.info/post/2008/09/12/lhc-how-fast-do-these-protons-go
When getting very close to c, the energy difference between two particles going at almost the same speed can be very large. A famous example of a very high-energy particle detected on Earth is the so-called “Oh-My-God particle”, probably a proton detected at a speed close to 0.9999999999999999999999951 c:
The energy of the Oh My God particle seen by the Fly's Eye is equivalent to 51 joules—enough to light a 40 watt light bulb for more than a second—equivalent, in the words of Utah physicist Pierre Sokolsky, to “a brick falling on your toe.” The particle's energy is equivalent to an American baseball travelling fifty-five miles an hour.
[...]
After traveling one light year, the particle would be only 0.15 femtoseconds—46 nanometres—behind a photon that left at the same time.
Mercury through my 'scope:
(curves are "best fit" after some image enhancement)
OT: Woman's plane photos of space shuttle go viral
This citizen journalism photo taken with a cell phone by Stefanie Gordon aboard a passenger flight from New York to Palm Beach, Fla. shows the space shuttle Endeavor as it streaks toward orbit shortly after liftoff Monday May 16, 2011. Gordon says she had just awakened from a nap on the flight when the pilot announced the shuttle might come into view. (AP Photo/Stefanie Gordon)
By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Matt Sedensky, Associated Press – Tue May 17, 7:37 pm ET
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Groggy from a late night watching the Yankees, frigid from a chilled airplane cabin, Stefanie Gordon stirred to action after the pilot's announcement. Lifting her iPhone to the plane's window, she captured an otherworldly image that rocketed around the globe as fast as her subject: Space shuttle Endeavour soaring from a bank of clouds, its towering plume of white smoke lighting the azure sky.
She had never imagined the response her airborne image — capturing the last launch of Endeavour and the next-to-last space shuttle flight — would ignite. The images and video have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter alone, landed on network newscasts and been published in newspapers worldwide.
In turn, they've made a photographic celebrity of sorts of the unemployed 33-year-old from Hoboken, N.J.
"It just blew up," she said of the attention.
Gordon caught an early Delta flight from New York to West Palm Beach on Monday to visit her parents and had a whole row to herself, never imagining the history she would record.
She stretched out and took a nap. Then she awoke shortly before the pilot announced the descent had begun and a sighting of the shuttle was possible. She had forgotten Endeavour was even taking off at 8:56 a.m. EDT, but readied her iPhone just in case.
Then, the pilot came on again, alerting passengers the shuttle was in sight.
"Everybody ran over to the east side of the plane," Gordon said Tuesday, "and all of a sudden there it was in the clouds."
All told, she shot 12 seconds of footage of the shuttle arcing on its simple stream of smoke into space. She also shot three still photographs.
The plane landed minutes later in West Palm Beach and while she was waiting at the luggage carousel, at 9:31 a.m., she began uploading to Twitter. As she waited for her father to pick her up, she realized her work was making a splash.
"My phone just started going crazy," she said.
Among those who reached out to Gordon was Anne Farrar, a photo editor at The Washington Post, who saw the images after they were posted by a friend on Facebook. She said she'd never seen anything quite like this view of a shuttle launch before.
"It was just a really imaginative way to bring it to our readers," Farrar said. "It's almost like an underwater view."
Endeavour is on a 16-day trip — the second to last space shuttle flight. Its main mission is to attach to the space station a $2 billion physics experiment.
The Associated Press contacted Gordon through Facebook and purchased the images. The AP often obtains photos from eye witnesses, called citizen journalists.
As for Gordon, she lost her job at as a meeting planner at a nonprofit organization last month. If the exposure from her pictures helps land her dream job of working in the sports field on special events and promotions, she said, it would all be worth it. Or if someone thinks her photographic eye qualifies her for a permanent job shooting video or photos, she wouldn't turn that down either.
For now, she's basking in the afterglow of her launch shots and hoping for some rest once the media frenzy passes.
"Laying by the pool would be really nice," she said.
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