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FrozenGate by Avery

Space Discussion Thread

I believe that it is difficult to argue urea is inorganic. It was the first "organic" molecule that was synthesized having always come from urine before. That was a story I learned in my organic chem class. Also, many of the organic solvents used contain C bonds without H,. but they have always been referred to as organic solvents.
 





When it comes to solvents, in chemistry the distinction in most cases is if it will mix with water or not. Things like methanol, ethanol, acetic acid and such are usually considered orgenic solvents as they are miscible with water in any ratio.

Something like benzene, ethyl ether, hexane etc are usually called inorganic. When you separate out fractions using a seporatory funnel you'd often just refer to the water layer and the inorganic layer, regardless of where any of the substance came from.

The better terminology here would be polar versus apolar, but in real lab conditions these things get up widely.

For astrochemistry you'd have to divide things up a bit further:

1 - generally available without any biological process (like water, or methane)
2 - uncommon without biological proces (like urea, fatty acids etc)
3 - almost certainly produced by some biological process (complex proteins, rna, dna, etc)

Category 2 is pretty broad though, depending on what you call 'uncommon'. One extreme example would be vitamin B12 - it is possible to synthesize that extremely complex module from the elements by chemistry without any enzymatic steps - i.e. it could be produced in a lifeless environment.

This synthesis takes over 70 steps and has an end yield of 0.01 percent or something like that, so i'd probably place detection of B12 as evidence of life, unless deliberately planted. For somehting like urea though, i would not consider it a sure sign of life. It takes only 2 very common substances (ammonia and carbon monoxide) and a bit of light to do it, which could easily happen on a lifeless world.
 
I saw that in the news. I figured the amount of ice was 12.7 miles across a cube of that volume of ice. That is quite a lot of water on the surface, as it hasn't sublimated away.
 
Since we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, thought I'd share these awesome coins, they were bought right after the landing in 1969.



Moon-Landing-Coins.jpg
 
Very nice E and E, those are some cool coins, thanks for sharing!
Too bad that the postage isn't still 18 cents.
 
Rivem said:
Edit 6/2/16:
We've diverged into a wide range of different space related topics outside of interstellar, so I'm changing the prompt and title of the thread from "Interstellar Space Travel" to "Space Discussion Thread". The original topic is still relevant, but feel free to post about anything else space-related.

So far, we've talked about the challenges and demand for FTL, a little bit of astronomy, a little bit of physics, propulsion technology, space suits, terraforming, solar system exploration, colonization, and more.


**Original***********************************************************************
Do you guys think we're ever going to be capable of interstellar space travel? What do you think it'll be like?

Even though space technology has sped up a lot with privatization, I still think we aren't innovating fast enough.

There's a lot of hype about a Martian colony, but it's currently bound to be disappointing for most of us and unreasonable for civilian life. I think that the only way humanity will be able to truly inhabit another planet is to find one that's very similar to Earth, but the only ones are outside our solar system.

Problem is that we're still pretty far from any technology that could get a human to a different solar system within their lifespan.

What do you all think?
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Rivem said:
Edit 6/2/16:
We've diverged into a wide range of different space related topics outside of interstellar, so I'm changing the prompt and title of the thread from "Interstellar Space Travel" to "Space Discussion Thread". The original topic is still relevant, but feel free to post about anything else space-related.

So far, we've talked about the challenges and demand for FTL, a little bit of astronomy, a little bit of physics, propulsion technology, space suits, terraforming, solar system exploration, colonization, and more.


**Original***********************************************************************
Do you guys think we're ever going to be capable of interstellar space travel? What do you think it'll be like?

Even though space technology has sped up a lot with privatization, I still think we aren't innovating fast enough.

There's a lot of hype about a Martian colony, but it's currently bound to be disappointing for most of us and unreasonable for civilian life. I think that the only way humanity will be able to truly inhabit another planet is to find one that's very similar to Earth, but the only ones are outside our solar system.

Problem is that we're still pretty far from any technology that could get a human to a different solar system within their lifespan.

What do you all think?
*******************************************************************************
[/QU
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ArcticDude said:
Jupiter will get so close to Earth this month its largest moons will be visible with binoculars

:cool:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jupite...noculars/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=68621740
Click to expand...

Awesome Tero, thanks for the heads-up buddy.
I love Jupiter (and Saturn.... and Mars).
They're quite a sight and I highly recommend taking a look at them.
You'll be blown away when you see Jupiter and it's moons dancing the celestial dance each night (using Binoculars).
Awesome when you get to see a 'Transit', when one or more of the moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede and/or Callisto) 'transit' the face of Jupiter and you get to see it's shadow on Jupiter... but you'll need a scope for that.
Here's a website that has an animation of what's going on in real time.

Galilean Moons of Jupiter

www.shallowsky.com www.shallowsky.com

You'll love Saturn doing the hula-hoop too.
Should be able to pick up the rings in a pair of Binoculars.

And why not throw Mars in there too, but you'll need a 'big' scope to see any detail.

Here's a few pics I took way back (circa) 2005-2006.
Keep in mind these are my very early attempts, I haven't tried imaging them recently.

Hope you like !

Jupiter and its moons, doing the celestial dance.
65068

65069

65070

Saturn, doing the hula-hoop.

65072

Mars, doing what Mars does best, being Mars.... :ROFLMAO:

65073

RB
 

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Wow, awesome pictures. That's really cool the one where you can actually make out Io's yellow coloration. I have a relatively small scope (90mm refractor) and I was able to clearly make out the cloud belts on Jupiter when I was out Thursday night. Not ideal conditions here either, very humid, and Jupiter is low on the horizon here in Ottawa, Canada now.

Definitely worth it to take a look even with a pair of average binoculars though. I could see the Galilean Moons even through my finder scope.
 
Ears and Eggs said:
Wow, awesome pictures. That's really cool the one where you can actually make out Io's yellow coloration. I have a relatively small scope (90mm refractor) and I was able to clearly make out the cloud belts on Jupiter when I was out Thursday night. Not ideal conditions here either, very humid, and Jupiter is low on the horizon here in Ottawa, Canada now.

Definitely worth it to take a look even with a pair of average binoculars though. I could see the Galilean Moons even through my finder scope.
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Thanks E&E, glad you like them.
Well done on viewing Jupiter's cloud belts.
(y)

blazingfire said:
Astro, those are some awesome pics. How did you take them.. camera mounted to a telescope?
Click to expand...
Thank you blazingfire, I'm glad you enjoyed them.
For the planets I used a basic webcam connected straight into my telescope.
Keep in mind that these days there are dedicated cameras for this, but back in 2005 we used webcams.

We'd make up a special little plastic nosepiece that screwed into the webcam and slip that into the telescope focuser with no eyepiece.
Essentially the webcam took the place of the eyepiece.
Webcams were better suited than say a DSLR because the webcam sensor size was better suited to planet photography.
Then we'd take a short video and use the individual frames from that video to process into a single image.
This minimises and smooths out any variable atmospheric blurring that takes place when you take just a single shot.
You use your best and sharpest frames from that short video to combine into a single photo instead.

Like I said these were my early attempts at planet photography.
I soon moved into deep space astrophotography instead and have not tried planet photog again.
I might go back and try my hand again when I get some time.

:)
 
I have a 100-400mm lens right now and since Jupiter should be showing up at night was thinking maybe I can get some decent pictures out of it. Sorta wish I had bought a sky tracker though.
 
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