*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

Probably the weirdest the thing you'll hear on here for a while as we get a harmonious melody of chimes, clicks and mechanical whirrs in the 'Musical Descent to Titan':


one scientist interpreted the January 2005 descent and landing of the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe on Titan. As the 700-pound probe parachuted to the surface, two onboard imaging instruments provided by NASA captured views of the moon’s cloud-filled atmosphere and dusty terrain.

In total, about 3,500 images were collected and transmitted to Earth via Cassini, a spacecraft that ferried the probe to Titan and stayed within radio contact during the three-and-a-half-hour mission.

Back on Earth, a time-lapse video was assembled from the images. As a bonus, a member of the instrument team added sounds to the video that represent the probe’s motion, transmission strength and its dual imaging instruments at work.
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Hubble breaks cosmic distance record:


This animation shows the location of galaxy GN-z11, which is the farthest galaxy ever seen. The video begins by locating the Big Dipper, then showing the constellation Ursa Major. It then zooms into the GOODS North field of galaxies, and ends with a Hubble image of the young galaxy. GN-z11 is shown as it existed 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe was only three percent of its present age.
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More:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1604/
 
On March 8th, 2016 Earth and Jupiter will have a close encounter and the giant planet will be "up all night," soaring almost overhead at midnight:

 
Here we are:


Cosimo said:
For those of you on the other side of the world:

Total Solar Eclipse - 8 March 2016 – 9 March 2016

uymL0pi.jpg


The total solar eclipse will be visible from Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi and from locations in the Pacific ocean.

The eclipse will be partial for people in South and East Asia and northern and eastern Australia.

The eclipse will begin at 23:20 UTC, on March 8 with the maximum point of the eclipse occuring at 02:00 UTC on March 9. Totality will last for 4 mins 09 secs.


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You can also watch it live here, starting from 01:00 tonight:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
 
Glaucus said:
Watching the search for life: Drake Equation. Really interesting wanted tot know what he thought at the time and the updates as science has progressed. On Netflix Canada might be in other regions.

Wonder if anyone has done an update equation, as it's far to simple imho. Doesn't take into accoutre things like a lot of the milkway being uninhabitable sue to radiation towards the core. And unlikely that life could exist in the early milkway. Still have the same issue, some if the factors if the equation aren't even estimates just complete stab in the dark guess work.
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Insufficient data for reliable answer. Once we have a good survey of 10,000 solar systems including reliable planet data then we can have some kind of odds.
 
Tomorrow, Cassini's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) will watch as the plume of gas and icy particles from the moon Enceladus passes in front of the central star in Orion's Belt:


Such observations, known as stellar occultations, provide information about the density and composition of the plume. Enceladus will pass in front of Epsilon Orionis, and UVIS will watch as the light from the star is altered as it passes through the plume. Enceladus will be 536,000 miles (923,000 kilometers) from Cassini at the time; the star is about 2,000 light years away.

This occultation will help fill in a key part of scientists' understanding about the gas part of plume and how it varies with time. If scientists see a similar increase in the water vapor abundance as they have seen in the particle abundance, it will suggest that the water vapor and entrained particles behave in the same way. This, in turn, will provide insight into the nature of the still poorly understood eruption mechanism behind the plume.
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James Webb Space Telescope update:

This time-lapse shows the first time that the optically complete telescope (18 primary mirror segments , the secondary mirror, and the Aft Optics Subsystem which contains the tertiary mirror) was placed in a deployed configuration.

 
The Early Flash of an Exploding Star:


The brilliant flash of an exploding star’s shockwave—what astronomers call the “shock breakout” -- is illustrated in this cartoon animation. The animation begins with a view of a red supergiant star that is 500 times bigger and 20,000 brighter than our sun. When the star’s internal furnace can no longer sustain nuclear fusion its core to collapses under gravity. A shockwave from the implosion rushes upward through the star’s layers. The shockwave initially breaks through the star’s visible surface as a series of finger-like plasma jets. Only 20 minute later the full fury of the shockwave reaches the surface and the doomed star blasts apart as a supernova explosion. This animation is based on photometric observations made by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. By closely monitoring the star KSN 2011d, located 1.2 billion light-years away, Kepler caught the onset of the early flash and subsequent explosion.
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NASA's Dawn spacecraft has revealed marvelous sights on dwarf planet Ceres during its first year in orbit, including the mysterious bright spots in Occator Crater:

 
Flyby Comet Imaged By Radar:


Radar data of comet P/2016 BA14 taken over three days (March 21—23, 2016), when the comet was between 2.5 million miles and 2.2 million miles (4.1 million kilometers and 3.6 million kilometers) from Earth.

Radar images and data from the flyby indicated that the comet is about 3,000 feet (1 kilometer) in diameter.
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