Cue Up the Twilight Zone Theme. Baker spots UFO

[hoorta]

@the-gipper said:

Well....note:   Baker did NOT say he saw "An Alien Spacecraft".....he said he saw a UFO.  Unidentified Flying Object.   You can profess to seeing a UFO without professing to see an alien spacecraft.   Its just that He didn't know what it was.   Sounded to me more like a meteor,   or it could have been SpaceX.  (But, doesn't an space launch go up, not down?)

On the other hand, perhaps even more inexplicable was the UFO the pilots saw last week:

https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/american-airlines-pilot-reportedly-sees-ufo-while-flying-over-new-mexico.html

Yeah, lots of "Unidentified Flying Objects ", until someone identifies them as something mundane.  As a lifetime amateur astronomer,  I've spent thousands of hours looking at the night sky,  and haven't seen one yet. Usually planes or bright meteors are the culprit.  The planet Venus frequently gets mistaken too. 

FWIW, the latest Space X did take off to about 6 miles up, and then came back and landed on a test flight. Spectacularly blew up on the ground about 5 minutes later. Easily could have been mistaken for a UFO.

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-sn10-test-launch-landing-explosion

[hoorta]

@orion said:

The Fermi Paradox.  Where are all the aliens?   We don't see them.  We don't hear them.  We don't see any sign of them.  Not with our best telescopes.  No signals from anywhere in the observable universe.  No signs of Dyson Swarms.  No self replicating robots colonizing a galaxy.  No evidence that a civilization ever got that far.  And in theory, there's been plenty of time before us, billions of years, for many civilizations to have progressed Waaaay beyond our current condition.  There's a Great Filter out ahead of us (most probably ahead of us, unless we're the first).  What is the Filter?  Is it a killer virus that wipes out life?  Is it that civilizations always ruin their habitat before they can figure out how to live as one with the planet?  Do civilizations eventually blow themselves up, or actually engineer and unleash a killer virus?  Does the universe wipe out life by gamma ray bursts eventually?  Asteroid / comet collisions?  

Is abiogenesis REALLY hard?  Was that the filter?   

If a civilization exists at such a distance that we will never know of them due to the expansion of the universe, then does it matter that they exist?  If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, did it make a sound?

I'm sure that Mayfield & Rogers saw something weird.  But the answer is never aliens.  

Me and Orion are both astronomers.... the bug bear to interstellar travel is this nasty thing called the speed of light.  Only way to get from point A to point B in our galaxy is hope wormholes exist. Fer instance- even IF you could build a spaceship capable of travelling at the speed of light- (that's 186,000 miles per second, you can get to the Moon in a second and change) it would still take you 4 years to get to our nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri.  

I always love to point out this reduction in scale example.  Shrink the universe down to- the Sun is a dot, and the Earth is an atom sized speck orbiting it one inch away. On that scale Alpha Centauri is 4 miles away. Our nearest neighbor Andromeda Galaxy would be 10 times more distant than the Moon.  

[ATOM]

@canton-dawg said:

I got a chuckle out of this.

TB12 clapped back on colin saying how do you know i have never seen alien,colin !

[The Gipper]

@hoorta said:

Yeah, lots of "Unidentified Flying Objects ", until someone identifies them as something mundane.  As a lifetime amateur astronomer,  I've spent thousands of hours looking at the night sky,  and haven't seen one yet. Usually planes or bright meteors are the culprit.  The planet Venus frequently gets mistaken too. 

FWIW, the latest Space X did take off to about 6 miles up, and then came back and landed on a test flight. Spectacularly blew up on the ground about 5 minutes later. Easily could have been mistaken for a UFO.

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-sn10-test-launch-landing-explosion

And that did take place somewhere in  south Texas.....so if the timing was right, that could have been it. 

[hoorta]

@the-gipper said:

And that did take place somewhere in  south Texas.....so if the timing was right, that could have been it. 

Nah- if Baker was back in the Austin area- it's almost 400 miles to the Space X launch pad in Boca Chica. Unlikely.. 

[Orion]

@hoorta said:

Me and Orion are both astronomers....

Calling me an astronomer is an insult to astronomers.  ?  I'm just a mild enthusiast.  I have an 8" equatorial that's set up in my enclosed back porch...but it hardly ever carries itself outside.   The constellation Orion is heading west now at night.  Spring's a Comin'.   

[gumby73]

[nickers]

@hoorta said:

Me and Orion are both astronomers.... the bug bear to interstellar travel is this nasty thing called the speed of light.  Only way to get from point A to point B in our galaxy is hope wormholes exist. Fer instance- even IF you could build a spaceship capable of travelling at the speed of light- (that's 186,000 miles per second, you can get to the Moon in a second and change) it would still take you 4 years to get to our nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri.  

I always love to point out this reduction in scale example.  Shrink the universe down to- the Sun is a dot, and the Earth is an atom sized speck orbiting it one inch away. On that scale Alpha Centauri is 4 miles away. Our nearest neighbor Andromeda Galaxy would be 10 times more distant than the Moon.  

I had also read that there are suns so big.. it takes centuries even millenia to make one single orbit around it... I find that fascinating.. And really puts you in perspective to what we really are in terms of scale.. It makes me wonder if there is some microbial lifeform with intelligence equal or greater than ours... Thats mind numbing when you think of the scope of our universe...

[nickers]

@orion said:

Calling me an astronomer is an insult to astronomers.  ?  I'm just a mild enthusiast.  I have an 8" equatorial that's set up in my enclosed back porch...but it hardly ever carries itself outside.   The constellation Orion is heading west now at night.  Spring's a Comin'.   

Me too... I just don't own a telescope yet.. I'm a space junkie...

[lodilobo]

@the-gipper said:

I am going to use this to augment the Survey thread:

Have you ever seen what you believe to be a UFO? 

I have not, not that I recall. 

I've seen weird things in the sky, that seem to move deliberately, then change direction, abruptly. If there are no aliens, how did mankind advance so far in the last 100 years or so, compared to the thousands of years of existence? One word...Roswell.

[calfoxwc]

well, I've always be an outdoorsman/kid. Back in the sixties, on the farm, I'd go out and watch the stars at night sometimes, waiting for shooting stars. One night, there was a bright "star" moving across the sky, but about 3? times faster than any satellite I've ever seen, and far faster than the space station moves across the sky. I was watching it, moving fast, on a crystal clear dark night, and about the middle of the sky, it made a freaking 90 degree angle, and started fading out, like a ufo going away from earth.

    Never saw anything like that again. 90 degrees? what the....so I give the Mayfields all the respect for what they saw.

You just never know.

As far as constellations... all I need to know is that the front lip of the big dipper, bottom to top, points toward North.

[hoorta]

@nickers said:

I had also read that there are suns so big.. it takes centuries even millenia to make one single orbit around it... I find that fascinating.. And really puts you in perspective to what we really are in terms of scale.. It makes me wonder if there is some microbial lifeform with intelligence equal or greater than ours... Thats mind numbing when you think of the scope of our universe...

I knew off of the top of my head many stars are so large, Saturn's orbit would fit very comfortably inside them.  Here's an image of the largest star we know about. In the dim constellation Scutum, 20 degrees north of Sagittarius.  

@nickers said:

Me too... I just don't own a telescope yet.. I'm a space junkie...

As to telescopes I actually own- an old 6" f\10 reflector I built 50 years ago. And a Meade 4" Schmidt-Cassegrain- the biggest 'scope that will fit in an overhead bin of an airplane. Handy when you go on solar eclipse trips. But you rapidly get spoiled when you have access to the local astronomy club's 16" reflector, or head out to star parties at dark sky sites where guys who are really into it haul their 24" and larger telescopes there on trailers. Jupiter was so bright looking through one of those 24" scopes, it almost hurt your eyes to look at it. 

PS- it's a waste of money having one of those big scopes, unless you live somewhere way out in the country. With the ever increasing light pollution and sky glow, looking for- as I like to call them "the dim fuzzies" is like trying to spot a polar bear in a blizzard.  

[Orion]

@calfoxwc said:

all I need to know is that the front lip of the big dipper, bottom to top, points toward North.

...towards True north.  Or Celestial north.  (the two stars farthest from the 'handle', follow the arc to Polaris)

A compass points to magnetic north which is to the left, or west, of true north.  Magnetic north is a bit of a moving target due to molten material movement down inside the earth.

[calfoxwc]

@orion said:

...towards True north.  Or Celestial north.  (the two stars farthest from the 'handle', follow the arc to Polaris)

A compass points to magnetic north which is to the left, or west, of true north.  Magnetic north is a bit of a moving target due to molten material movement down inside the earth.

close enough to perfect for me! Thanks

[Orion]

@calfoxwc said:

close enough to perfect for me! Thanks

Yup.  If you're reading a map you're using true north.  The stars are better than the compass.  If you know how to use them.  I'd wind up at the north pole going in circles. 

[gumby73]

@orion said:

 The stars are better than the compass.  If you know how to use them.  I'd wind up at the north pole going in circles. 

[TexasAg1969]

@calfoxwc said:

well, I've always be an outdoorsman/kid. Back in the sixties, on the farm, I'd go out and watch the stars at night sometimes, waiting for shooting stars.

As far as constellations... all I need to know is that the front lip of the big dipper, bottom to top, points toward North.

In "point" of fact they aim directly at Polaris, the North Star. Of course if it's cloudy I take out my trusty multi-decade old turn of the 19th century brass cased compass.?

https://earthsky.org/tonight/use-the-pointers-to-find-polaris#:~:text=Big Dipper stars point to North Star. A,well known among amateur astronomers as The Pointers.

[hoorta]

@texasag1969 said:

In "point" of fact they aim directly at Polaris, the North Star. Of course if it's cloudy I take out my trusty multi-decade old turn of the 19th century brass cased compass.?

https://earthsky.org/tonight/use-the-pointers-to-find-polaris#:~:text=Big Dipper stars point to North Star. A,well known among amateur astronomers as The Pointers.

More trivia.   Well if it's a clear night- at least in Ohio, I can always orient myself.  OTOH, we're living in a time where Polaris is (pretty close, not exactly) our "North Star". Wasn't always- or will be the case.  The Earth, because of the gravitational drag on the us from the Moon wobbles like a top that's slowing down. It takes 24,000 years to complete one wobble.  (Um, more accurately- the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn should now be renamed the Tropic of Gemini and Tropic of Sagittarius. )  Stars like Thuban in the constellation Draco, or Vega in Lyra will be "North Stars"- eventually.  FWIW, currently there's no "South Star".  The very dim 5th magnitude star Sigma Octans is as close as you get.  

Now if you go way north- or way south, your perspective changes dramatically. The one time I was in Alaska when it was dark enough to see stars- really disorienting.  Those stars should be way up there- but they weren't. My bucket list thing is to get south of the equator to see the sky (and Orion) flipped upside down. Tahiti at 17 degrees south works.   

PS- as a kid - I thought I wanted to be a professional Astronomer. Several problems. First, you have to be a crack mathematician. Second, you need at least a Doctorate, and job opportunities are extremely limited. Third,  guys were researching stuff at the time like Chandrasekhar's Limit, orbital mechanics (Grandpa gave me a magazine that had the equations on how we got the Mariner probe to Venus in 1962) , and theoretical astrophysics have zero interest to me.  

[TexasAg1969]

@hoorta said:

More trivia.   Well if it's a clear night- at least in Ohio, I can always orient myself.  OTOH, we're living in a time where Polaris is (pretty close, not exactly) our "North Star". Wasn't always- or will be the case.  The Earth, because of the gravitational drag on the us from the Moon wobbles like a top that's slowing down. It takes 24,000 years to complete one wobble.  (Um, more accurately- the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn should now be renamed the Tropic of Gemini and Tropic of Sagittarius. )  Stars like Thuban in the constellation Draco, or Vega in Lyra will be "North Stars"- eventually.  FWIW, currently there's no "South Star".  The very dim 5th magnitude star Sigma Octans is as close as you get.  

Now if you go way north- or way south, your perspective changes dramatically. The one time I was in Alaska when it was dark enough to see stars- really disorienting.  Those stars should be way up there- but they weren't. My bucket list thing is to get south of the equator to see the sky (and Orion) flipped upside down. Tahiti at 17 degrees south works.   

PS- as a kid - I thought I wanted to be a professional Astronomer. Several problems. First, you have to be a crack mathematician. Second, you need at least a Doctorate, and job opportunities are extremely limited. Third,  guys were researching stuff at the time like Chandrasekhar's Limit, orbital mechanics (Grandpa gave me a magazine that had the equations on how we got the Mariner probe to Venus in 1962) , and theoretical astrophysics have zero interest to me.  

And on my bucket list is to see the Southern Cross. Got my "pioneering" compass all set to go. Damn this COVID crap.?

[Orion]

@hoorta said:

First, you have to be a crack mathematician

Yeah.  That's where they lost me.  I'm only good at the guzintas.  One guzinta two.  Two guzinta four,  etc.