@cgbassa@astrodon.social
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cgbassa

@cgbassa@astrodon.social

Astronomer at ASTRON in the Netherlands, working with the LOFAR low frequency radio telescope. Posts mainly about space related topics.

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cgbassa, to random
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Northern lights are visible from the South of the Netherlands this evening!

cgbassa,
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@markmccaughrean this was around 22:30CEST and the red band moved from North East to North West. The red band is gone now but the green haze in the North is still there. Smartphone cameras should be able to pick up the Northern Lights better than the naked eye.

sundogplanets, to random
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talks are about to start! I'm sitting next to a biologist who studies the effects of light pollution on sea turtles in Australia, and another who studies the effects on mammals in the western US. This is so cool!

cgbassa,
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@sundogplanets Just a heads up that these all sky cameras are easy to build yourself. See https://www.instructables.com/Wireless-All-Sky-Camera/ and https://github.com/thomasjacquin/allsky for a solution using Raspberry Pi's and their cameras.

sundogplanets, to random
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I just volunteered to lead a stargazing thing at my local library, which should be exciting - mostly I use big telescopes that professional observers run for me, because I'm a spoiled professional astronomer.

So, hey astronomers (especially amateurs with small scopes)! What are your favourite targets to look at in the sky with a small scope at this time of year? Bonus points if they're pretty easy to find! (It's a just-after-sunset observing session, last quarter moon, so no moon, darn)

cgbassa,
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@sundogplanets The summer sky, when it finally gets dark, has some nice objects for binoculars and small telescopes. Highlights are the Dumbbell nebula (M27, a planetary nebula), the Albireo double star in the head of Cygnus, sporting a very blue and very red star, the M13 globular cluster in Hercules, the Coathanger asterism in Vulpecula, and more globular and open clusters and nebula at lower declinations towards the Galactic center, but they may be hard to see at low elevations.

cgbassa,
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@sundogplanets Stellarium is also available for smart phones and tablets (iPhone at least), where you can turn satellites off. I can recommend it, as well as the desktop version.

JohnBarentine, to space
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"At the end of 2022, countries had a total of 6,718 active orbiting the planet, an increase of nearly 2,000 satellites in just one year. The bar chart below lays out the massive expansion in assets that started in 2020 and has only kept going, increasing by an average of almost 30% in each of the last three years."

https://blog.ucsusa.org/syoung/how-many-satellites-are-in-space-the-spike-in-numbers-continues/

cgbassa,
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@JohnBarentine @jknodlseder Do you know how "operating satellites" is defined? That information is usually quite hard to uncover. A similarly depressing plot I made recently used the US CSpOC catalog of objects it lists as a payload and as still in orbit. A familiar hockeystick shape...

cgbassa,
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@JohnBarentine @jknodlseder True, that is another hard to define distinction, and certainly lots of cubesats are not controllable but still function. The CSpOC payload definition is relatively clean as that is derived from matching (pre-launch) customer information with in-orbit tracking.

sundogplanets, to random
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Gross. I complain a lot about Starlink satellites screwing up the visible sky, but turns out they're massively screwing up the radio sky too: https://cps.iau.org/news/new-radio-astronomical-observations-confirm-unintended-electromagnetic-radiation-emanating-from-large-satellite-constellations/

cgbassa,
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@sundogplanets Unfortunately they are, and in this case because they are unintentionally leaking radio waves from their electronics. My co-authors, including @HIprocessor, and I were worried about this but had our fingers crossed we wouldn't see anything, but we were wrong...

cgbassa,
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@sundogplanets @HIprocessor We hope so too! Shielding this radiation may be easier than making satellites less reflective for optical astronomy, but astronomers are still having to rely on the goodwill of satellite operators, as regulations are always an afterthought when launching these.

markmccaughrean, to animals
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Look who just walked in after almost four weeks 😱🥰

He’s lost a lot of weight & scarfed down a plateful of food in seconds, but otherwise apparently very noisily happy to be home 😺

I’m speechless & hugely grateful that the universe continues to move in mysterious ways 🙇‍♂️



cgbassa,
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@markmccaughrean This news makes me very happy! I'm glad that is all right and that we may see more posts in the future, though perhaps he's exhausted his quota to leave the house.

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