Insight System - Post 1

Triangulum Log - Post 3 - The Vista System

We’ve moved away from the last system and traveled nearly 13,000 light years to another system on the edge of Triangulum.

Here we come across a system which I have called the Vista system, due to some of the stunning views of gas giants and their moons.

This system is configured rather unusually, in that the asteroid belt forms the inner-most part of the system, orbiting close to the star with a single dwarf planet orbiting within. Above are pics of the inner-most dwarf planet.

This moon-sized world orbits 0.13 AU from the sun, with a scorching surface temperature of 760°.

More pics of worlds in this system to come.

Links to high resolution pics above.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Pictures of the day 2 - November 24, 2019

I have to admit, this planet is probably to closest reminder to me of Christmas. This purple-colored Earth with violet seas and a deep purple atmosphere is quite unique. Whats even more fascinating about the planet is its brilliant green sunsets and sunrises.

Space Engine System ID: RS 5581-42-1-2-487 6 (Unedited)

High Resolution Pics

Purple Earth

Lone Moon

Kind of Christmassy

Weird Atmosphere

Green Sunset

Tumblr Changes - My Thoughts

I know this post is not about space and astronomy, but I wanted to voice my thoughts about the upcoming ban on Tumblr and how the automatic algorithms are going to affect everyone on there.

First off, I do not post or follow any NFSW Tumblr, so the primary ban does not affect either my Space Engine Tumblr or Rabbit and Shark Tumblr or other Tumblr’s that I follow in that regard, but the algorithms Tumblr has created are already beginning to affect my space engine posts. I mean seriously, how are my pictures of planets, alien landscapes and nebulas being flagged as adult material?

I understand that there are nearly 450 million users on here, but Tumblr has just 400 or so employees and for their employees to go through perhaps billions of images is not practical so they had to write a program to do the work for them. Auto-flagging images however, is a major problem for us non-NFSW Tumblrs, and we are only just now seeing the start of this problem. Eventually it is going to get to the point that we all have to wait weeks even months for our “sensitive marked” pictures to be marked as safe, since an actual person will have to review it.

Final conclusion. This ban and the way it is being implemented is a bad idea, and to be honest I also think an assault on free speech. More importantly, Tumblr better fix its auto-identification programs before a lot of us leave out of frustration when pictures of planets, rabbits, and sharks are all marked as adult.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD AND REPOST.

What are white dwarfs?

Some curiosities about white dwarfs, a stellar corpse and the future of the sun.

Where a star ends up at the end of its life depends on the mass it was born with. Stars that have a lot of mass may end their lives as black holes or neutron stars.

A white dwarf is what stars like the Sun become after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel. Near the end of its nuclear burning stage, this type of star expels most of its outer material, creating a planetary nebula.

In 5.4 billion years from now, the Sun will enter what is known as the Red Giant phase of its evolution. This will begin once all hydrogen is exhausted in the core and the inert helium ash that has built up there becomes unstable and collapses under its own weight. This will cause the core to heat up and get denser, causing the Sun to grow in size.

It is calculated that the expanding Sun will grow large enough to encompass the orbit’s of Mercury, Venus, and maybe even Earth.

A typical white dwarf is about as massive as the Sun, yet only slightly bigger than the Earth. This makes white dwarfs one of the densest forms of matter, surpassed only by neutron stars and black holes.

The gravity on the surface of a white dwarf is 350,000 times that of gravity on Earth. 

White dwarfs reach this incredible density because they are so collapsed that their electrons are smashed together, forming what is called “degenerate matter.” This means that a more massive white dwarf has a smaller radius than its less massive counterpart. Burning stars balance the inward push of gravity with the outward push from fusion, but in a white dwarf, electrons must squeeze tightly together to create that outward-pressing force. As such, having shed much of its mass during the red giant phase, no white dwarf can exceed 1.4 times the mass of the sun.

While many white dwarfs fade away into relative obscurity, eventually radiating away all of their energy and becoming a black dwarf, those that have companions may suffer a different fate.

If the white dwarf is part of a binary system, it may be able to pull material from its companion onto its surface. Increasing the mass can have some interesting results.

One possibility is that adding more mass to the white dwarf could cause it to collapse into a much denser neutron star.

A far more explosive result is the Type 1a supernova. As the white dwarf pulls material from a companion star, the temperature increases, eventually triggering a runaway reaction that detonates in a violent supernova that destroys the white dwarf. This process is known as a single-degenerate model of a Type 1a supernova. 

If the companion is another white dwarf instead of an active star, the two stellar corpses merge together to kick off the fireworks. This process is known as a double-degenerate model of a Type 1a supernova.

At other times, the white dwarf may pull just enough material from its companion to briefly ignite in a nova, a far smaller explosion. Because the white dwarf remains intact, it can repeat the process several times when it reaches the critical point, briefly breathing life back into the dying star over and over again. 

Image credit: www.aoi.com.au, NASA, Wikimedia Commons, Fsgregs, quora.com, quora.com, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, S. Wiessinger, ESO, ESO, Chandra X-ray Observatory

Source: NASA, NASA, space.com

Saturn’s equinox in 2009 taken by Cassini spacecraft

Credit: NASA/JPL

Picture of the day - November 27, 2018

Red and dusty desert world similar to Mars but with a much thicker atmosphere, glowing red under the light of a red sun.

Moon Halo

Credit: Mikhail Reva

Picture of the Day - February 13, 2019 (Late post)

Uniquely colored desert world with life.

Picture of the day - December 6, 2018

Another picture of the fifth planet of the Insight B system.

End of the Day

Picture of the Day - October 18, 2018.

Sunset on an alien moon.