Posted on 04/22/2014 7:48:56 AM PDT by NewHampshireDuo
Our reference is the mountains. Mountains are to the West. Only works during the day, though. :)
“There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark.”
Pink Floyd.
One of the best books for learning the stars and constellations:
http://www.amazon.com/Stars-H-Rey/dp/0547132808/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398200828&sr=1-1&keywords=rey+stargazing
Jupiter isn’t close.
The smallest Brown Dwarf (we know of) to achieve stellar ignition is 50 Jupiter masses.
Made for a nice Science Fiction story tho.
For the OP, if you really want to blow their ‘minds’ tell them our star even has a name, and they used it before system.
I think it was the “Jedi Academy” trilogy. There’s a large black hole cluster near the planet Kessel. Smugglers fly as close as possible to it without falling in in order to evade Imperial patrols.
Yeah, I’m a huge SW nerd, so what? :0)
I think one of the Timothy Zahn Star Wars novels attempted to spackle over that faux pas. Something about the Falcon being fast enough to allow its pilot to fly a shorter course around a gravity well.
That was “I, Jedi” I believe: Idea is - as you summarized - that Kessel was in the midst of the Maw cluster of black holes. The faster the spaceship, the “straighter” that it could fly through the winding path going between the black holes. Thus, an average ship might need a path 60 parsecs long. A faster ship can get through with a shorter path - 50 parsecs long. A very, very fast ship then only needs the 30 parsec length.
Kind of like a teenage driver claiming his “time” in a 1/4 mile rather than the speed. Or a claim for 0-60 in ___ seconds, rather than an actual acceleration. A football player talkin’ about his time in the 40 yard dash.
Not quite. It was considered impossible to get through The Maw (nice, I'd forgotten the name), but when they did get through thanks to the help of the powerful Force-sensitive (later Dark Jedi, then Jedi) Kyp Durron (no, I didn't have to look that one up), Han Solo and his fellow travelers (don't remember who...Lando and Chewbacca, maybe?) stumbled onto the secret Imperial research facility in the center where the super-smart scientists had developed the Death Star and the Sun Crusher. The security force was commanded by Admiral Daala, I think. That chick was hard core crazy.
It was definitely the Jedi Academy series, though I haven't read "I, Jedi" so I couldn't confirm or deny if Kessel or The Maw play a part in it.
Jupiter is not even close. It needs about 75 to 80 times as much mass to achieve ignition to be a red dwarf.
50 Jupiter masses is still a brown dwarf. It is massive enough to achieve deuterium ignition (13 Jupiter masses minimum), which will not last long. Not quite enough mass to start burning what little lithium is there.
Still not enough mass to initiate a proton-proton chain reaction.
Deuterium ignition is not Stellar ignition(Hydrogen fusion).
There was a BD discovered a year or 2 ago about 50MJ, that had achieved Stellar ignition. I’ll see if I can dig up a link.
IIRC it had a dust cloud and planet formation surrounding it.
Ha! Yeah, when I was in school, I had all that kind of stuff in my back pocket. I could pull them out like a switchblade...
Well, time and years in project management sure take a toll on the technical stuff. Have a great week.
Right!
Sorry, that’s what I started with, but for some reason I switched to the Calorie value, rather than the calorie one.
The good news is I no longer need to starve myself until Buck Rogers shows up (”in the 25th Century”) to get back to my “fighting weight”.
Never mind it was misidentified due to a distant red giant behind the cluster.
Some model rocket fans have used a summer sausage with a hole drilled lengthwise as fuel and nitrous oxide as the oxidizer.
It makes a passable rocket motor.
http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2013/07/12/hybrid-rocket-overview-part-2/
(read the “Fuel Grains” paragraph about 2/3rds down the page)
...and they VOTE!
I've got a worse one, same situation, college Astronomy. The question was "where are these places, up in the sky or something?"
Please advise the name of that app. I would be most interested.
I asked - it’s called Google Sky Map.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.