Have you ever wondered how you’d mine an asteroid? Not many people have. But you may be interested to discover that scientists are actually attempting to achieve this, seemingly impossible, feat. You may even remember reading about an asteroid mining company here at The Silo. That company is still in business.
Why? Well, an asteroid can hold many materials that are considered to be very valuable back here on earth. And, bearing in mind how many asteroids there are, asteroid mining could turn into being a far more “earth-friendly” way to gather resources.
So, check out this infographic from our friends at fuelfighter.co.uk and discover how scientists are planning on mining Asteroids and how much it could cost in US dollars/British pounds to do so.
Toronto’s York University will soon play host to the largest telescope on a university campus in Canada. The university announced recently that the new one meter telescope will arrive in 2018 to replace the existing 40 cm telescope which is used to conduct astronomical research.
York U will have a customized one meter telescope fitted with CCD electronics. Here is a diagram of a similar telescope. Image- orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov
The current record holder (at the time of this article) for the largest telescope on a Canadian university campus is the 0.8 metre telescope which is housed at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
Is Bigger Better?
Size isn’t everything when it comes to judging a telescope, however what really matters is the ability to gather light efficiently. A larger mirror means a greater light gathering capability. With more light comes more information and the ability to identify more details. Even in environments with a lot of light pollution, with enough light information astronomers are able to pick out stars and other celestial objects from all the other noise in the data.
Pubic Outreach
York University is already housing two telescopes; the aforementioned 40 centimetre telescope and another that is 60 centimetres but isn’t used for astronomical research or public outreach in the way that the 40 centimetre version is.
It is hoped that this new telescope will allow for students to engage in more advanced research objectives and will hopefully therefore entice a broader range of students and interests to the astronomy department. It is hoped that it will benefit students who live in York university housing. As well as benefiting students, it is hoped that the new telescope will also prove to be a boon to the university’s efforts to do more to further its goal of scientific outreach, giving the public the opportunity to view objects such as galaxies, which require expensive equipment to be view-able to amateur astronomers. Every Wednesday night the telescope will be open to members of the pubic and, for those that cannot attend these weekly sessions, every Monday the university will host live, online viewing through the telescope and take requests from the public for what to look at through it.
Galaxy image- public domain.
Portraits of the Cosmos
The new telescope will also be equipped with a charge coupled device camera which will allow the university to take images of celestial bodies in the night sky with the utmost clarity. Among the sights within our own solar system that the new telescope will make visible to viewers from Earth is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The Great Red Spot is a storm which has been raging on Jupiter’s surface for the last 187 years, first confirmed to have been observed in 1830, however there are records purporting to be of observations of the same phenomena dating back as far as 1665.
Similarly the rings and moons of Saturn, which can be viewed with even a basic telescope at the right time of year will be easy to see with great detail. It is hoped that sights like these will induce more children and young people to consider studying astronomy.
The arrival of the new telescope to York University should give the astronomy department a shot in the arm and will hopefully encourage the university to further its public outreach programs. For the Silo, Dimitry Karloff.
At about 17:30 CEST on 16 October, the data link with the ExoMars/TGO orbiter had still not been fully re-established following separation. Subsequently, at around 18:40 CEST, ESA (the European Space Agency) re-established a full data link with the spacecraft, and the mission control team could confirm that separation had taken place as planned, at 16:42 CEST. Both the Schiaparelli module and the TGO orbiter are in good shape and en route – separately – to arrive at the Red Planet on 19 October. We will be hosting the live video feed from ESA and wish them all the best of success in landing on Mars.
Schiaparelli Mars Rover
An orbiter carried on the ExoMars 2016 mission will hunt for methane in the atmosphere and show if it’s likely to have been generated by geology or biological processes. In other words- suggestive evidence of life/past life on Mars.
Share your smart device/phone/tablet/laptop/webcam video with us- or upload a Mars or space related file by clicking here: [vidrack align=”left”]
Don’t miss out on incredible historic space items such as the first complete Lunar Bible flown aboard Apollo 14. Heritage Live! allows you to place late proxy bids and compete live against the auction floor from your PC or mobile device*. We recommend placing proxy bids before the live session in the unlikely event either side experiences technical problems during the auction.
The software is available for Android, Safari for iPhone, and Opera Mobile version 10+. More will be supported in the coming months.
At approximately 10:15 PM EDT on March 17th I witnessed a strange sight. While driving into Simcoe, Ontario via Hillcrest Road, something low on the horizon caught my attention. At first I wondered if this was a planet but after I pulled the car over to the side of the road and focused harder, it became clear that this object was flashing through a whole spectrum of colours: red, blue, yellow, white one at a time at a high rate. Strange lights?
Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day and skywatchers were made aware of the forecasted Solar Storm that brought Northern Lights much further south than normal. This was not the Northern Lights.
I wasn’t able to take any video because my camera phone would not zoom in to capture the object but I did manage to zoom in using the photo feature. Today I moved the photo’s onto my laptop and zoomed in further using a video editing program. I then re-opened those photo’s and used the desharp/enhance/deinterlace feature in gimp software to attempt a better look at what I saw. I am still surprised by the results- the colours that I saw vividly and clearly did not show up on the photographs and the photographs reveal what looks like a shape-shifting object!
I’ve been so intrigued by this I decided to return to sighting location so I could take a daytime photo of the sky/horizon where I had the sighting and I used my phone to get a compass reading on the direction of where the object was.
The first series of photo’s- shown below are the camera-zoomed in series and are unenhanced by software. The second series of single photo’s are the software-zoomed in and enhanced versions of the first four photographs . I’m hoping someone can offer up ideas on what I saw by commenting below or emailing The Silo (contentproducer@thesilo.ca) *name with held by request*
Synopsis-A privately-owned spaceship built by Orbital Sciences Corp. made an Earth-rattling trip into orbit from Virginia on Wednesday, September 25th starting a four-day chase of the International Space Station to close out a nearly $700 million NASA program to foster a fleet of commercial spaceships to replace capabilities lost with the space shuttle’s retirement. Today (Sept 29th) is the end of the chase and culminates in a docking via Canadian Robotic arm capture with the ISS International Space Station. Read the full story from our friends at Spaceflight Now
