Pugmum1 - A Bit Of Everything

Every time I try to cook 👍🏼 #trex #relatable

Northern lights and sunrise as captured by Scott Kelly aboard the ISS.

Comets have two tails.

There are two types of comet tails: dust and gas ion.

A dust tail contains small, solid particles that are about the same size found in cigarette smoke. This tail forms because sunlight pushes on these small particles, gently shoving them away from the comet’s nucleus. Because the pressure from sunlight is relatively weak, the dust particles end up forming a diffuse, curved tail.

A gas ion tail forms when ultraviolet sunlight rips one or more electrons from gas atoms in the coma, making them into ions (a process called ionization). The solar wind then carries these ions straight outward away from the Sun. The resulting tail is straighter and narrower. Both types of tails may extend millions of kilometers into space. As a comet heads away from the Sun, its tail dissipates, its coma disappears, and the matter contained in its nucleus freezes into a rock-like material.

Comets don’t like the sun.

Comets lose a lot of mass when they go by the Sun. A lot: some shed hundreds of tons of material per second. That’s actually a small fraction of the mass of a comet, but given time, and lots of solar passes, it adds up. Every comet we see is slowly dissolving in space. Eventually even the mighty Comet Halley will be gone, broken down into a swarm of rocks, gravel, and dust once its gas is gone.

Making laundry day fun

It's the Star Wars BB-8 by Sphero. Don't miss my hands on on Mashable!

Oh, snap ~ that must be good for a fracture or two, feel bad for him.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2015 October 14 

A Gegenschein Lunar Eclipse 

Is there anything interesting to see in the direction opposite the Sun? One night last month, there were quite a few things. First, the red-glowing orb on the lower right of the featured image is the full moon, darkened and reddened because it has entered Earth’s shadow. Beyond Earth’s cone of darkness are backscattering dust particles orbiting the Sun that standout with a diffuse glow called the gegenschein, visible as a faint band rising from the central horizon and passing behind the Moon. A nearly horizontal stripe of green airglow is also discernable just above the horizon, partly blocked by blowing orange sand. 

Visible in the distant sky as the blue dot near the top of the image is the star Sirius, while the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy arches up on the image left and down again on the right. The fuzzy light patches just left of center are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Red emission nebulas too numerous to mention are scattered about the sky, but are labelled in a companion annotated image.

New Horizons is going 36,000 MPH! This is what it would probably look like if you were inside of it (and it had windows, of course).

No chill 😂

Hey there! I'm an amateur astronomer and I'm looking at saving $400-600 on a telescope, what do you think would be better, a refractor or reflector? I'm willing to carry it in my car and traveling wherever I can to get good images to observe.

Hi! That’s great that you’re looking in to getting a telescope!

Overall, reflector telescopes are better than refractor telescopes. I have a telescope myself, and its a reflector.  

They are made up of mirrors, which is an advantage because mirrors can be as big and thin as you want, which makes them overall lighter and easier to move around.  Refractor telescopes have lenses in them, which limits them to the size they can be since you can only make lenses of a certain size.

Placement of the lens/mirror is also imperative when talking about telescopes. In reflector telescopes, the mirror is located at the back of the telescope, so the mirror could be as big as you want and it wont bend the telescope in any way. In refractors on the other hand, the lens is located near the front. If the (objective) lens is too big, it can actually cause the telescope to bend, which is why there is limits on how big you can have the lens.

(In my reflector telescope, the lens is actually at the back behind the secondary mirror)

Of course, the main purpose of a telescope is to take in as much light as possible. So naturally, the bigger the opening at the front, the more light the telescope can take in, increasing the image quality.

That being said, both of the telescopes are great, and I’m pretty sure refractors may be a little cheaper. But keep in mind, even if you get a refractor now, there’s always an opportunity to upgrade to a larger, different kind of telescope if you continue with your observing!

Hope that helped! If not, feel free to clarify anything :)