Recent content by matthewota

There is nothing more juvenile than bathroom humor. That is all I have to say about it.

That is because it is night time at your location and the ISS is still in sunlight as it passes overhead. Once it gets into the Earth's shadow it vanishes.

You are confusing weight with mass. Spacesuits in microgravity can be cumbersome just moving the joints and especially using the gloves. It takes just as much effort to move mass as it does on Earth, a fact that was learned in the Gemini program when Gene Cernan struggled on his EVA.

Instead of watching the movie, you should read "Lost Moon" by James Lovell. The movie overly dramaticized events. They were not suffocating when they jury-rigged the lithium hydroxide system. There was not a heated argument between Swigert and Lovell. Pure fantasy on the part of the...

I am binge watching "The Expanse" instead. Hard science fiction instead of space opera fantasy.

The heavier binoculars have more optics onboard.

Stars are so far away that any amateur telescope will only show them as brighter points of light. With a telescope, you will see fainter stars, but again they are points of light. You can see what are called extended objects like the moon and planets. But to see the planets properly you need...

Celestron binoculars are fine. The more expensive ones in the product line have better optics, like porro prisoms.

The Apollo Lunar Module. The only manned spacecraft designed to operate strictly in the vacuum of space, needing no aerodynamics.

Space buff since 1961. Amateur astronomer. Former telescope operator at Mt. Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles California. Currently residing in Phoenix Arizona. I have been posting in astronomy and space forums since 1991, starting with sci.space.history on the Usenet (the precursor to the...

At pericynthion, Apollo 13 set the record (per the Guinness Book of World Records), which still stands, for the highest absolute altitude attained by a crewed spacecraft: 400,171 kilometers (248,655 mi) from Earth at 7:21 pm EST, April 14 (00:21:00 UTC April 15).

The Bortle Artificial light scale is used worldwide by astronomers to gauge the level of light pollution: Class 1: Excellent dark-sky site - Black The zodiacal light, Gegenschein, and zodiacal band (S &T: October 2000, page 116) are all visible - the zodiacal light to a striking degree, and...