Scientists Take Advantage of Rare Celestial Opportunity

[Stevepinto3]

just think, all this the scientists are monitering actually happened 350 years ago! there could be other races, 250 light years between here and there who are all, "dude! you're still interested in that junk!? we were watching that like 100 years ago man!"

Well, considering it probably takes millions of years for an individual planet to form, I doubt being a few hundred years ahead of us would make that much of a difference in what they see.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Looks like I will need to take some time to get caught up on my recent astronomy academia.
Been too busy with these stupid classes to get anything useful done...

(For context: I help run an astronomy observatory)

 

[Plurralbles]

when I want to call a famous person fat I'm going to say, "You're so fat when you fart you birth a planet!"

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

If they could build bigger and more powerful telescopes, they could "jump ahead" to see the planet develop faster.

No you really, really couldn't. No matter how big your telescope is, light from the star will still reach it at the same speed (what with it being a universal constant and all (and for the one inevitable person who quotes this and starts talking about mediums along with relative speeds and gravity: shut up. I know.))

Odd, that comment I wrote actually made sense when I was typing it out. Now, not so much.

 

[Lineoutt]

I will sound very stupid... But that's CGI right?

I feel like it is, but I am with you lol i don't know.

 

[OneBig Man]

Its amazing people get paid to look through a telescope and guess whats going on. I'd do it as a hobby.

 

[Latinidiot]

No 2001: A Space Odyssey music? For shame.

=P

That's called Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Also, does anyone wonder what happened with Lauren's weekly science article?

 

[ShadowKatt]

I wonder what the elemental makeup of the planet will be. Planets close to stars have a tendancy to be terrestrial, so we could be looking at another earth if that's the case.

 

[McMullen]

For some reason, when I read the title "Scientists Take Advantage of Rare Celestial Opportunity" I thought of some dark cult summoning C'thulu now that the stars were aligned >.>


Anyways, back OT: That's pretty cool, might be exciting to see it happen firsthand.

Odd association. As I understand it, it's difficult to be a cultist and a scientist at the same time unless one is a fraud.

OT: Good. I'm actually surprised they were able to get as much data as the article made it seem they got. Technology is a great thing, no?

 

[McMullen]

I will sound very stupid... But that's CGI right?

Yep. There are a handful of probes that have made it out of the solar system, but the farthest is only 0.0018 light years from the sun, and it's been traveling for 33 years. If the solar system was your house in Los Angeles, and another star system was somewhere like New York, then the distance traveled is comparable to crossing the street in front of your house. There are currently no probes in space that are predicted to ever catch up with it.

So, any image that is from a perspective outside the solar system that has any detail to it at all (read: showing any object, even the sun, as more than a 2x2 pixel dot) is illustrated or computer-generated.