Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

So tomorrow night the Juno probe arrives at Jupiter, and we then have almost 20 months of data collection, followed by a dive into the Jovian atmosphere, and presumably a number of years of analysis and publications.

It is hoped that we will learn a lot more about Jupiter, such as whether there is a solid core, and what makes its powerful magnetic field. It should be an exciting time. :)

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Yes, I'm looking forward to this one. After the what New Horizons sent back from Pluto, I'm expecting this one to be every bit as good.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Thanks for posting the link.

So different from Mars. (and Pluto)

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Yes, will be interesting to see Jupiter close up. The pix released by Nasa on Instagram this week have been very sharp. But I suppose if it's gaseous there won't be the same level of detail as Pluto. It's hard to imagine a planet of that size not having any solid core, but the universe works in mysterious ways.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

So no sooner than Juno arrives at Jupiter (good to see it was successfully placed into orbit around Jupiter, BTW :thumbup:), than pictures are captured by Hubble, which despite being able to look billions of lightyears into the distance/past, has been engaging in some almost literal navel-gazing by focusing on Jupiter.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Great images as always.

Hubble is just a great mission all round, really. From the deep field images to relatively straight-forward solar system stuff.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Why do we not have any approach pictures yet? There's that animated picture of Jupiter and moons, but it's from such a distance. Is Juno still at the far end of its elliptical orbit?

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Best I could find was that it powered down onboard systems for orbital maneuvers. Perhaps the little vignette of Jupiter and the moons is all we'll get until it's in orbit and can resume imaging.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

A bit tangential, but what did you think of that Nasa "blockbuster style" You Tube on Juno ?! Quite amusing, but it's surprising how Nasa has evolved from a conservative government agency into a media savy organisation. Times change, I suppose.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Did you see they've found a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, which in space terms isn't so much as being "in our back yard", but rather "on our backdoor threshold and stopping the door from closing"?

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Yeah, I saw that the other day, but I haven't had a chance to read a proper article on it yet.

In space terms, that's almost within reach. Maybe within 1-200 years, and I believe it is supposed to be an earth-like planet.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

It might he challenging living on it though, a year lasts 11 days!

The only reason it is in the "Goldilocks zone" is that PC is a brown dwarf, so it can orbit PC much more closely than Mercury is to the Sun without burning up.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Yeah, but orbiting a red dwarf

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

It wouldn't be very practical to live there, but as a 'stepping stone' to other exoplanets, or even just as a base to study an alien solar system it would certainly be worth a visit.

Is it a brown dwarf? I thought it was a red dwarf.

Re: Spaceships and astronomy
 

Just saw this on the page refresh when I posted.

I think it's certainly worth sending a probe to, even if we don't send people there.

I read yesterday as well that there is a proposal to send a submersible probe to Titan to study the methane lakes there. That would be an interesting one.