Space News/UFO's Etc...(Discussion/Pics/Vids)

Text "Between these constellations sits an unusual star, invisible to the naked eye, but visible to the Kepler Space Telescope, which stared at it for more than four years, beginning in 2009. “We’d never seen anything like this star,” says Tabetha Boyajian, a postdoc at Yale. “It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out.” Kepler was looking for tiny dips in the light emitted by this star. Indeed, it was looking for these dips in more than 150,000 stars, simultaneously, because these dips are often shadows cast by transiting planets. Especially when they repeat, periodically, as you’d expect if they were caused by orbiting objects. The Kepler Space Telescope collected a great deal of light from all of those stars it watched. So much light that Kepler’s science team couldn’t process it all with algorithms. They needed the human eye, and human cognition, which remains unsurpassed in certain sorts of pattern recognition. Kepler’s astronomers decided to found Planet Hunters, a program that asked “citizen scientists” to examine light patterns emitted by the stars, from the comfort of their own homes. In 2011, several citizen scientists flagged one particular star as “interesting” and “bizarre.” The star was emitting a light pattern that looked stranger than any of the others Kepler was watching. The light pattern suggests there is a big mess of matter circling the star, in tight formation. That would be expected if the star were young. When our solar system first formed, four and a half billion years ago, a messy disk of dust and debris surrounded the sun, before gravity organized it into planets, and rings of rock and ice. But this unusual star isn’t young. If it were young, it would be surrounded by dust that would give off extra infrared light. There doesn’t seem to be an excess of infrared light around this star."

Text "It appears to be mature. And yet, there is this mess of objects circling it. A mess big enough to block a substantial number of photons that would have otherwise beamed into the tube of the Kepler Space Telescope. If blind nature deposited this mess around the star, it must have done so recently. Otherwise, it would be gone by now. Gravity would have consolidated it, or it would have been sucked into the star and swallowed, after a brief fiery splash. Boyajian, the Yale Postdoc who oversees Planet Hunters, recently published a paper describing the star’s bizarre light pattern. Several of the citizen scientists are named as co-authors. The paper explores a number of scenarios that might explain the pattern—instrument defects; the shrapnel from an asteroid belt pileup; an impact of planetary scale, like the one that created our moon. The paper finds each explanation wanting, save for one. If another star had passed through the unusual star’s system, it could have yanked a sea of comets inward. Provided there were enough of them, the comets could have made the dimming pattern. But that would be an extraordinary coincidence, if that happened so recently, only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space. That’s a narrow band of time, cosmically speaking. And yet, the explanation has to be rare or coincidental. After all, this light pattern doesn’t show up anywhere else, across 150,000 stars. We know that something strange is going on out there. When I spoke to Boyajian on the phone, she explained that her recent paper only reviews “natural” scenarios. “But,” she said, there were “other scenarios” she was considering. Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, is set to publish an alternative interpretation of the light pattern. SETI researchers have long suggested that we might be able to detect distant extraterrestrial civilizations, by looking for enormous technological artifacts orbiting other stars. Wright and his co-authors say the unusual star’s light pattern is consistent with a “swarm of megastructures,” perhaps stellar-light collectors, technology designed to catch energy from the star. “When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” Wright told me. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.” Boyajian is now working with Wright and Andrew Siemion, the Director of the SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. The three of them are writing up a proposal. They want to point a massive radio dish at the unusual star, to see if it emits radio waves at frequencies associated with technological activity. If they see a sizable amount of radio waves, they’ll follow up with the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, which may be able to say whether the radio waves were emitted by a technological source, like those that waft out into the universe from Earth’s network of radio stations. Assuming all goes well, the first observation would take place in January, with the follow-up coming next fall. If things go really well, the follow-up could happen sooner. “If we saw something exciting, we could ask the director for special allotted time on the VLA,” Wright told me. “And in that case, we’d be asking to go on right away.” In the meantime, Boyajian, Siemion, Wright, the citizen scientists, and the rest of us, will have to content ourselves with longing looks at the sky, aimed between the swan and the lyre, where maybe, just maybe, someone is looking back, and seeing the sun dim ever so slightly, every 365 days.
 
A Mesmerizing NASA Video Shows Sun In Intimate Detail
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http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/wonder/a-mesmerizing-nasa-video-shows-sun-in-intimate-detail/vi-BBmO7QB
can i say wow
 
Fireballs are falling to Earth tonight in numbers we won't see for another 10 years — here's how to watch
Code:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-watch-taurid-meteor-shower-2015-11
 
Nibiru?

Hello Guys,

I have read so much hype and watched so many you-tube video`s` concerning this mysterious planet X and all the scare monger concerning its approach ....Estimated time of arrival = now or mid march 2016.

I would like to here your views on this please.

Hopefully a constructive truthful approach.
 
like i always save why cant we see it now with all stuff looking into space

Good question...but through investigation it seems that it may be difficult to see via the naked eye so they say.
That was why they apparently sent probes into space with infra-red technologies ? Still it does seem a bit far fetched to me and I agree ..if it was closing in for the End of times? Surely we would see it soon.. Well lets hope we don't see for a very long time to come.
 
Alot of those youtube vids that I've seen are just lens flare. :

Agree...But there are one or two that got my attention and got me wondering...lol
This one in particular .

There is also one from a guy who tries to dissect this footage..But fails to come to any other conclusions other than mystery object ? after discounting the know planetary systems alignments in Mid September, when this was taken.

Pandemonium would occur if the world was to announce this as fact ...So that also got me thinking too ..:confused:

I have found myself looking to the stars alot more often in recent times with an uneasy feeling. :eek:

Hopefully more come in with there thoughts and even a pic`s or two and share there experience`s , Would be quite cool.
 
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This Week’s Sky at a Glance, November 13 – 21
By: Alan MacRobert | November 13, 2015

Monday, November 16

• This is the time of year when the dim Little Dipper extends to the left from Polaris just as twilight ends. If you can't see the Little Dipper's 4th- and 5th-magnitude stars, at least you can see 2nd-magnitude Kochab and 3rd-magnitude Pherkad, "the Guardians of the Pole," at the end of the Little Dipper's bowl some 17° to Polaris's left. That's nearly two fists at arm's length. Farther left lies the arched back of Draco.
Tuesday, November 17
• The typically weak Leonid meteor shower is likely to peak late tonight: from about midnight local time until dawn Wednesday morning. Good luck.
Wednesday, November 18
• The brightest star on the northeastern side of the November evening sky is Capella, magnitude zero. It's below Perseus. Look well to its right (about three fists at arm's length) for the Pleiades, the size of your fingertip at arm's length. Below the Pleiades blinks orange Aldebaran.
Thursday, November 19
• Orion is now clearing your eastern horizon by about 8 p.m. (depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone). Aldebaran is high above Orion. Above Aldebaran are the Pleiades. Aldebaran and the Pleiades always serve as Orion's early announcers.


WEBvic15_Nov21ev1.jpg


Friday, November 20
• Whenever Fomalhaut is "southing" (crossing the meridian due south, which it does around 7 p.m. this week), the first stars of Orion are just about to rise in the east, and the Pointers of the Big Dipper stand directly below Polaris (for skywatchers in the world's mid-northern latitudes).
• Before dawn tomorrow morning, look east for bright Jupiter and brighter Venus. Between them is little orange Mars. Look carefully; very close to Mars is the 4th-magnitude star Eta Virginis. The two may appear less than 0.1° apart depending on where you are.
Saturday, November 21
• After dark these nights, Altair is the brightest star in the west-southwest. Look upper left of it, by barely more than a fist at arm's length, for the delicate little constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin. To Altair's upper right by a lesser distance is little Sagitta, the Arrow.

This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury is hidden in superior conjunction with the Sun.
Planets before dawn, Nov. 14, 2015
Before dawn begins the Jupiter-Mars-Venus line shines especially bright, but Spica is still low.


Venus, Mars, and Jupiter continue their display in the east before and during dawn, but they're drawing farther apart. Venus is the brightest at magnitude –4.4. Jupiter, higher, is –1.9, and Mars, between them, is much fainter at +1.6.
Watch the line lengthen this week. Venus is descending; Jupiter and Mars are moving higher. And so is Spica; look for it well below Venus, more or less in line with the planets.


Saturn (magnitude +0.6) is hidden deep in the afterglow of sunset.
Uranus (magnitude +5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude +7.8, in Aquarius) are high in the southern sky during evening.

WEBvic15_Nov14mo1.jpg



sky&telescope
 
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Leonid meteor shower: When, where, and how to watch

THE SHOW SHOULD PEAK AROUND MIDNIGHT ON TUESDAY ON BOTH U.S. COASTS—AND EVERYWHERE IN BETWEEN

On Tuesday, November 17, the Leonid meteor shower will hit its peak. The annual event, caused by bits of ice and rock burning in Earth’s atmosphere, will create a host of shooting stars above the eastern horizon around midnight in the U.S. (local time on both coasts, when the constellation Leo rises). Here’s our guide to the shower.
Where To Look, And When
Any single meteor might appear anywhere, but for the most part Tuesday’s shooting stars will appear to come from the constellation Leo—hence, “Leonids.” Leo will rise above the eastern horizon at about midnight. But meteors will be visible even before then. So if you're in the U.S. and the skies are clear, head out any time after sunset and look east. Try to find a dark site away from street lights, or better yet, away from cities altogether.

leonid2015_horizonchart.jpg


Likely Awesomeness Rating: Medium
The Leonids peak every three decades, and this shower comes mid-cycle—the last peak was in 1998. So we won’t see a phenomenal number of shooting stars. (If you’re bummed about that, console yourself with some of the illustrations of the famous 1833 Leonid meteor storm—a pretty incredible event.) This year, NASA predicts we’ll see one meteor about every four minutes.
That’s a moderate rate. But in this year’s favor, the moon will be a crescent, which means a darker sky that makes streaks of light easier to spot. Strike against: the current cloud-cover forecast predicts overcast skies for a good fraction of the U.S. that night.
Why Now?
The Leonids happen every year around November 17. That’s when the Earth passes through the cloud of debris left behind by the comet Tempel-Tuttle. Don’t worry about an actual impact—Tempel-Tuttle is currently further than Uranus. We’re just crossing its orbit. There’s no chance we’ll hit the comet itself.

leonid2015_orbitchart.jpg





Tempel-Tuttle’s debris cloud is actually pretty big. The shower will peak Tuesday night, but we’ll still see more meteors than usual the rest of the month. So if it’s cloudy on November 17, keep your eyes on the sky when it clears again. You’ll have another chance to make your wish on a shooting star.

By Katie Peek
popsci.com
 
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