Feature This week's community question is about celestial objects!

MMohammed

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Oct 10, 2019
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Howdy howdy and happy Monday, everyone! :D

For this week's community question, I thought I'd go a bit more broad with the parameters. To put it lightly, I am a big fan of Jupiter. Honestly, I wish I had a more fascinating reason than this: It's just a ridiculously huge planet. I mean, it's MASSIVE. Anyway, that's enough to amaze me.

So, what about you guys? What are your favourite celestial objects and why?

Remember, we'll be featuring some of our favourite answers on the weekly community round-up!
 
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L9D24k8.jpg

Howdy howdy and happy Monday, everyone! :D

For this week's community question, I thought I'd go a bit more broad with the parameters. To put it lightly, I am a big fan of Jupiter. Honestly, I wish I had a more fascinating reason than this: It's just a ridiculously huge planet. I mean, it's MASSIVE. Anyway, that's enough to amaze me.

So, what about you guys? What are your favourite celestial objects and why?

Remember, we'll be featuring some of our favourite answers on the weekly community round-up!
Way back when, some of my hardware has been to and from the moon, so it is still my favorite! Since I m long retired I no longer have hardware even on the Space Station, but if I could only get Elon Musk's staff to respond to my comments, i could halp him build better and more efficient rockets! LoL!
 
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Jun 10, 2020
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Howdy howdy and happy Monday, everyone! :D

For this week's community question, I thought I'd go a bit more broad with the parameters. To put it lightly, I am a big fan of Jupiter. Honestly, I wish I had a more fascinating reason than this: It's just a ridiculously huge planet. I mean, it's MASSIVE. Anyway, that's enough to amaze me.

So, what about you guys? What are your favourite celestial objects and why?

Remember, we'll be featuring some of our favourite answers on the weekly community round-up!
M31. And Saturn- because I've been fascinated by it ever since I was little.
 
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Mar 26, 2021
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L9D24k8.jpg

Howdy howdy and happy Monday, everyone! :D

For this week's community question, I thought I'd go a bit more broad with the parameters. To put it lightly, I am a big fan of Jupiter. Honestly, I wish I had a more fascinating reason than this: It's just a ridiculously huge planet. I mean, it's MASSIVE. Anyway, that's enough to amaze me.

So, what about you guys? What are your favourite celestial objects and why?

Remember, we'll be featuring some of our favourite answers on the weekly community round-up!
I'm fascinated by Pluto/Charon. However, I believe we should be taking a much closer look at Triton circling Neptune. Scientists see a lot of similarities between Triton and Pluto. Triton is a more active moon and much closer than Pluto.
 
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Mar 21, 2021
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Our extrasolar visitor Oumuamua. Old comet, broken alien spacecraft or big chunk of frozen nitrogen. Either way, very cool to have an extrasolar visitor. I understand the current popular hypothesis is that Oumuamua was a big chunk of Nitrogen ice knocked off a Pluto-like planet. However, what sort of impact would have accelerated such a such a large hunk of N2 ice that it entered our solar system at 16 miles per second? The initial speed must have been even greater to leave it's own solar system.

That's one hell of a push-start.
 
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Well, the biggest "Wow" for a young viewer with a telescope is, by far, Saturn. Cassini's images make this extra beautiful. IIRC, Saturn has won top place in contests. The rings are so cool that the super villain in Destiny chose to go put a huge hole in it. ;)

A second choice for me, perhaps, would be the Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation" image, which presents a special story of the birth of stars and planets actively taking place. There's even a number of animal images that stand out in those columns, if you enjoy pareidolia.

[Added: For fun, see who can find the most number of animals in those columns. :)]
 
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Okay, a number of these references like Jupiter, Saturn, M31, Pleiades make for great views using good telescopes. My 10-inch Newtonian using 2-inch eyepiece makes M31 look wonderous :) I like them all here :)
 
Mar 14, 2021
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Back about 25 years ago, I went on a bender to log as many Messier objects as I could. I got the obvious ones first -- Andromeda, Pleaides, Orion Nebula, etc. Then I went after several of the harder to finds -- I remember M81 and 82 in Ursa Major, M13, 33, 34, 35, 39, 52, a few others. I was somewhere into the teens by the time I stopped. All with an Edmund Astroscan!
 
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A huge interest of mine is the exoplanet 51 Pegasi, which was one of the first discovered exoplanets. It was a huge contributor to the field of astrobiology because it was really the first exoplanet to in any way resemble planets in our solar system, thus opening discussion for potential life in exoplanets.
 
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Jupiter & Saturn all the way<3 Except for Earth of course, but I think we all agree that´s our #1 priority. Needless to say I would be beyond delighted to see a mission to Enceladus, Europa or Ganymede in my time! I mean one that drills below the Ice & looks around in one of those under-ice oceans! But there are many fascinating Celestial objects out there, I just hope one of the nearby ones harbors Life - whatever that may be!
 
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Nov 17, 2020
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Howdy howdy and happy Monday, everyone! :D

For this week's community question, I thought I'd go a bit more broad with the parameters. To put it lightly, I am a big fan of Jupiter. Honestly, I wish I had a more fascinating reason than this: It's just a ridiculously huge planet. I mean, it's MASSIVE. Anyway, that's enough to amaze me.

So, what about you guys? What are your favourite celestial objects and why?

Remember, we'll be featuring some of our favourite answers on the weekly community round-up!
I was shown or had a vision of Jupiter. It has high hills of brown sand and a river running next to it.
 
Mar 4, 2021
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Howdy howdy and happy Monday, everyone! :D

For this week's community question, I thought I'd go a bit more broad with the parameters. To put it lightly, I am a big fan of Jupiter. Honestly, I wish I had a more fascinating reason than this: It's just a ridiculously huge planet. I mean, it's MASSIVE. Anyway, that's enough to amaze me.

So, what about you guys? What are your favourite celestial objects and why?

Remember, we'll be featuring some of our favourite answers on the weekly community round-up!

Probably not exactly what you meant by "celestial objects", and outside of the fact that virtually every celestial body fascinates and interests me; I am quite obsessed with the ISS. I have a tracking program for it that alerts me 10 minutes in advance of it's pass over my location. No matter how many times I've watched it pass overhead, I still go outside to wait for it everytime the notification sounds (weather/sky viewability permitting that is). Up until 2 years ago I hadn't ever seen it, but once I discovered that tracking program and calibrated it for my exact rural area, it's been total obsession ever since. I'll get up in the middle of the night to go outside if a notification comes through. I've watched it with the naked eye, with binoculars, and have even caught it, albeit briefly, with my old telescope by having it set up and ready as it comes into view off the horizon. When the nights start to warm up, I'm looking forward to seeing if I can get lucky with my newest telescope. I don't quite understand this obsession myself, but I just thoroughly enjoy seeing it while simultaneously being able to see it's exact speed and distance from me; as well as being able to show it to someone else who has never seen it and watching their excitement and enthusiasm. Knowing there are really people on board as it flies by and that mankind has progressed technologically so much from the 60's and 70's when I was a child. Younger generations today can tend to take our technological achievements for granted since they've always know our life like this; but I still remember my mom sitting me down in front of the TV to watch the moon landing. It didn't necessarily feel important to me as a 6 year old girl, but I remember my mom saying that one day I'd be thankful I watched, and boy was she right! Sorry for digressing away from the question so much, but it all leads to my fascination with viewing anything the night sky brings my way!
 
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IG2007

"Don't criticize what you can't understand..."
My most favourite celestial body is our dear old Mother Earth. Except Earth, my favourite celestial body is Sagittarius A*. It always fascinates me how it keeps together the whole Milky Way galaxy with its humongous gravity.
 
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Jan 16, 2021
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Howdy howdy and happy Monday, everyone! :D

For this week's community question, I thought I'd go a bit more broad with the parameters. To put it lightly, I am a big fan of Jupiter. Honestly, I wish I had a more fascinating reason than this: It's just a ridiculously huge planet. I mean, it's MASSIVE. Anyway, that's enough to amaze me.

So, what about you guys? What are your favourite celestial objects and why?

Remember, we'll be featuring some of our favourite answers on the weekly community round-up!
Hmm i guess my favourites are meteors. They're so beautiful. Those pieces of dust and debris from space that burn up in Earth's atmosphere, where they can create bright streaks across the night sky... They're really fascinating 💕😌
 
Mar 7, 2021
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II wish I could... see... Orion/Betelgeuse on the (cosmic time scale) verge of going BOOM!
-Wolf sends

Good news (sort of) - I think you've been granted your second wish. It's about to go BOOM.

Betelgeuse has been looking sick for more than a decade - the convection cells on Betelgeuse's surface are not turbulent little 'knots' like on our Sun, but instead are (proportionally) about the size of typical polygon sections on the skin of a soccer ball. Those big cells on Betelgeuse move feebly.

It doesn't look good.

Then there's that worrisome recent dimming of Betelgeuse that a chorus of astronomers immediately rushed into the media to dismiss as "nothing to worry about". After a few days their spokesmen decided the dimming was all due to a hypothetical cloud of dust. (No evidence has been offered.)

Imagine that Betelgeuse went Supernova 390 years ago and will soon blow our socks off.

If so, the event will make the End Permian mass extinction event of 250 myr ago look like a kindergarten class picnic.

How big will the blast radius of Betelgeuse's Nova be? Can we say Vela X, or the Crab Nebula, or Messier 82 during 2013? Sure we can.

Dimetrodon, our brother...
 
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I am amazed by the universe we live in. I am amazed by the variety of galaxies that make up the internal anatomy. Galaxies, Quasars, Pulsars, Planets, moons and stars, and the great Donut Hole in the gooey center of all galaxies; maybe even the center of the universe itself. I love Venus for its fiery temperament. But, what about planet with masses 100 times that of mortal Earth? Planets are like snowflakes, none two are alike. This is what curls my toes in the realm of astronomy. I just want to get my teraflop on.
 
L9D24k8.jpg

Howdy howdy and happy Monday, everyone! :D

For this week's community question, I thought I'd go a bit more broad with the parameters. To put it lightly, I am a big fan of Jupiter. Honestly, I wish I had a more fascinating reason than this: It's just a ridiculously huge planet. I mean, it's MASSIVE. Anyway, that's enough to amaze me.

So, what about you guys? What are your favourite celestial objects and why?

Remember, we'll be featuring some of our favourite answers on the weekly community round-up!
I’m a fan of Venus! I think that, as a celestial object, this one is pretty cool because of its characteristics and the way it has been so romanticized!
 

Catastrophe

"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
"Venus! I think that, as a celestial object, this one is pretty cool"

Ummm. Surface temperature about 698 K

"The global average nightside surface temperature of Venus is about 698 K with a spatial variation of over 230 K. Due to very thick and reflective atmosphere7,8,9,10, Venus surface absorbs about 2.5% of incident solar flux as compared to about 50% on Earth1"

Nice choice of adjective.

Cat :) :)
 

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