The universe and us , what we can see and do

Best channel for what we know,

https://youtube.com/@sea_space

Best channel for how is was discovered 

https://youtube.com/@parallaxnick637

I get lost in it,have a 16 inch newtonian in Dobsonian mount. It was 500 bucks in 92 from courtlier optics . Need a recote but still does it,have a 8 inch meade with equatorial mount but cant touch that big glass.

Now THIS.....is a topic that interests me more than just about anything.

Hit that sea channel , the early universe vid and one of his latest “ to the edge of universe”  great stuff , I look hard for long technical space videos that don’t use lookalikes and hell , I dunno, these two are the best I’ve found by a long shot long shot

It’s truly insane how small we really are. I could read about space for hours.

Here's a good channel for documentaries on the US rocket missions. Their videos are long, boring, thorough, and great.

https://youtube.com/@JacksonTyler

If sun was scaled to a pea on football goal line earth would be 3 feet away the planets would be on the field with Pluto in other end zone. Proxima centari the closest star would be 125 miles away 4.2 light years actual distance. 

I've read about the distances before , but that right there is a great explanation.

What makes that incredible is , that next nearest star is 125 miles away in that measurement. Supposed to be 100 - 200 billion stars in just our galaxy. Multiplied by millions of other galaxies , only give a glimpse of the shear scale.

I know first hand just looking at Andromeda through a good scope , is incredible. People think it's just a star until they look real close. 

Mars and the moon are in conjunction right now. A little cloudy here so I am unable to see it very well. Hoping it’ll clear up soon so I can get a good view. 

Wow , I never heard of this JUICE satellite until now. Incredible piece of machinery. I really enjoy reading up / watching anything I can of the JWT as well. Wish we could get more from it , but understand it takes time. The past 15 + years , we have sent some really impressive satellites into space. 

There is a scope coming on line with the largest digital camera ever. I think Chile is where. It will map the sky ever 3 and half days. About 1000 new things are discovered a year now this thing will bring it to a million a year with the data being available to anyone to pour thru. It’s gonna be epic piece.  Going from crippled memory but think I got all that right, lol

This is the best space time ,time paradox documentary out there, brian greene explains it on a high level. I've watched it 2 dozen times I guess along with a 12 hour one this shorter one is taken from

https://youtu.be/CKJuC5CUMgU

and even crazier is that we have no evidence of life anywhere except on earth.

To be fair , if planet earth was like the universe.....we haven't even stepped off our own front porch yet. We haven't found life yet , because we haven't gone anywhere. 

If we could see really far and really clear , there may be hope. But traveling?  If I remember right , that next closest sun is 4.2 light years away , and it would take 80,000 years for us to even reach that one, with the technology we have today. 80,000 years!! Crazy how big space is. 

That's true . Even finding microbial life elsewhere in our own solar system would be huge though.  It would completely change the game .

I’m sure you guys have read this before, but it’s still mind blowing to think about.

There are more stars in our own galaxy than grains of sand on our ocean’s beaches.

That is so insane. Think about how many grains of sand are on one single beach. Then think about how many more galaxies there are. Just nuts. 

I was really into astrophotography many years ago. I built this telescope pretty much for that purpose.

Nice, 10 or 12 inch looks.

I bought a 4 inch Meade refractor , me and my buddies just wanted to drop acid or shrooms build fire and look all nite. Well , it just big Enuff to piss me off so I found that 16 inch Newtonian for about same price cause of the basic mount but hell didn’t need to track much just watch it go across the mirror  

good times

And if u took off at say half speed of light all the stars would star moving quickly because of that’s where it was 4 yr ago . So in 8 yr when you get to it the map u started with would be useless and if u got turned around probably couldn’t pick out sun out to save your ass.

Guidance/Navigation at those speeds is mind boggling. It’s not just “where”…it’s also “when”.  

A neat but sad thing to consider regarding the expansion of the universe: 

There is a limit to what we can see: Only the light from stars that are close enough to us has had time to reach our eyes. This is the observable universe. Stars which are beyond the "edge" can never be seen.
Because space itself is expanding, stars and their parent galaxies are getting farther and farther away from us all the time. The day will come when all galaxies but our own have receded beyond our ability to see them and only the Milky Way will remain. (This is unless the expansion of the universe reverses - hard to imagine but maybe that's how it happens.) 

Anyway, no Human being will be around at that time, but if there is still life in our galaxy, they won't be able to see any of the extra-galactic cosmological beauty that we can. 

Let the universe in peace, detroy the plante is enought.

Saturn and the moon will be in conjunction tonight. Best viewing is early AM hours 4-6ish.

The speed of light is 186,000 miles a second.

In just one second, light would travel around the earth 7 1/2 times. 

Look at some of the stars in the sky and consider that they are so far away that the light you are seeing started its journey when the dinosaurs were still walking around. 

Mind blowing. 

...and some are much, much older than that.