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Capturing Starman from 1M miles away
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoI headed to a semi-dark site not far from home (I live in Sunnyvale, California) for which I have a night permit - Montebello OSP. You need a permit to take pictures of the sky?
- RyanMathewson 9y agoThat location is normally open between sunrise and sunset. I assume the permit allows access all night.
- double0jimb0 9y agoIt’s a very popular observation spot and permits try to manage its overuse. Errant car headlights can spoil an observation, the area caters to enthusiasts that follow a slew of best practices (only using red flashlights in the dark to preserve night vision, etc).
- ballenf 9y agohttp://www.stlplaces.com/night_vision_red_myth/ http://www.stlplaces.com/night_vision_red_myth/ Isn’t the red light preserving night vision a myth?
- maxxxxx 9y agoFrom my experience it works. Sometimes I wonder if it works mainly because most red lights are pretty dim.
- bdamm 9y agoReducing blowout by 2/3rds of the spectrum (or more) seems like a good thing. I don't get the "myth" people. Maybe they just prefer blue or green dim lights? Historically it's got some influence from black and white photography, where black and white film was typically least sensitive to the red spectrum and sometimes not sensitive at all, giving a small frequency window where one could operate in a "dark" room without exposing the film the photographer was working with, because the human sensitivity to red is many times better than the film's sensitivity to red.
- maxxxxx 9y agoWith digital it seems almost the opposite way. When you lightpaint with red even barely perceptible light has a huge effect compared to other colors. Blue for example doesn't register much in comparison.
- M_Bakhtiari 9y agoLand of the free.
- isostatic 9y agoFree to observe the night sky without someone else trampling on that freedom
- M_Bakhtiari 9y agoAs long as you have a night sky observation permit. The United States has serious problems with bean counter overreach: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/08/criticizing-red-light-cameras-is-not-a-punishable-offense-oregon-concedes/?utm_term=.28a5dee72b95 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/0... Meanwhile the conservative politicians keep talking incessantly about deregulation, but it seems like it only applies to specific regulations that are inconvenient to friends of their, instead of actually attacking the deep cultural problem American society has with bureaucratic overreach. For goodness sake, a lot of actual dictatorships will meddle less in your personal business than the United States.
- haZard_OS 9y agoWould you mind naming 2 of those dictatorships and perhaps explain what metric you used to arrive at your conclusion?
- maxxxxx 9y agoThe US has also a problem with private overreach as in rich property owners closing off huge areas of land completely. This is a huge problem in the west if you do any hiking. In Germany or Britain there usually is a path through but in the US they just close it off.
- JshWright 9y agoReally? You have a problem with a specific site being set aside for night time astronomical observation?
- 9y ago
- wiradikusuma 9y agoSorry for the stupid question (I wasn't following this event): so it's a _real_ car? inside an aircraft (which i imagine the inside is like military cargo ship as seen in movies)?
- Joe-Z 9y agoYes it is. I think it's also Elon's very own :) And yes, it was carried into orbit with the upper stage of the Falcon Heavy.
- kowdermeister 9y agoYes, it's a real car and it's not inside anything. There's a thruster attached to it and that's it. I made a mashup which adds some music to it :) http://awesomestarman.glitch.me http://awesomestarman.glitch.me (autoplay audio, works on desktop only)
- maxerickson 9y agoIt's rather the other way round, the car is attached to the front end of the second stage. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/25016/what-all-is-included-in-the-contraption-around-star-man https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/25016/what-all-is-...
- bdamm 9y agoAnd a payload adapter, right? I hope the mass of the payload adapter is significant, e.g. they buried a block of concrete in there.
- mapt 9y agoThe first few launches of a new vehicle are risky. Even some of the most mature launch platforms still fail 2-10% of the time after hundreds of launches, but a new platform needs a period to discover all the failure modes that they didn't hypothesize. Usually for the very first proving launch, commercial customers don't want to send anything, and insurers refuse to touch them. So launch providers typically send a block of concrete, or something similar, and call it a 'Mass Simulator', to prove that the launch vehicle can function with a load that heavy. Elon Musk literally thought 'Hey, the Tesla Roadster I've been driving would be a cool thing to send into space as a mass simulator.' And so he did. With a mannequin inside a production Tesla spacesuit. Blaring David Bowie the whole way. Aiming roughly at Mars and burning until the propellant runs out. Starman will be in heliocentric orbit indefinitely.
- obiefernandez 9y agoParallax error prevented him from finding it at first! Didn't know this was a thing in astronomy. > "Since the Roadster is still fairly close to us, parallax is significant, meaning, different locations on Earth will see Starman at slightly different coordinates," Andreo said. "I quickly recalculate, get the new coordinates, go to my images, and thanks to the wide field captured by my telescopes... boom! There it was! Impossible to miss! It had been right there all along; I just never noticed!"
- jjaredsimpson 9y agoNot accounting for position on the surface of the earth could introduce as much as 0.45 degrees of error in the apparent position for an object 500000 miles away. This is same as the apparent diameter of the moon for a reference.
- schiffern 9y agoCool. By symmetry, right now from Starman's perspective the Earth appears as large as [we see] the Moon.
- jjaredsimpson 9y agoTwice as large. The angle was subtending the radius of the Earth not the diameter.
- schiffern 9y agoIt all depends on whether the software defaults to some observing location on the Earth's surface (eg the Royal Observatory), or to the center of the Earth. I was making a conservative assumption that it could do either one (having seen both behaviors in different astronomical software), but your argument is only correct if it's the latter.
- jjaredsimpson 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cyberferret 9y agoGiven its elliptical orbit, when is the next time the vehicle will be close enough to earth so that it can be observed with hobby telescopes etc.? I can imagine in the years/decades to come, this will become as significant as seeing Halley's comet returning etc.? It will also be interesting to see how the car holds up to the rigours of space (effect of sunlight and the extreme cold on the paintwork, rubber tyres etc.)
- conradfr 9y agoI use the app ISS Detector for that. I didn't see the Tesla because of the weather but it has been added, same for Humanity Star (sadly both on the paid extension only IIRC).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- maskedinvader 9y agoI believe the answer to that is sometime in the year 2091 source : https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/17804-elon-musk-tesla-crash-earth https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/17804-elon-musk-tes...
- svantana 9y agoHalley's comet is ~11 km in diameter, which makes it visible to the naked eye when it's close enough. Potentially astronomers will be able to spot this car at some point in the future, but I doubt that will give the same wow factor to the average joe.
- zaroth 9y agoElon’s just gonna have to go bigger next time.
- eevilspock 9y agoSeems such a waste. Launches are expensive. There isn't something useful to put into heliocentric orbit for which the higher risk of a new rocket is worth the tradeoff for a free launch?
- JshWright 9y agoHonestly? Probably not... You're also overlooking the very real utility of PR. Launching a car excites people and makes future "useful" missions more likely.
- throwaway5752 9y agoI upvoted you because it's a good point, but consider it was the first launch ever of this rocket so presumably people were reluctant to put important and expensive payloads on it.
- ars 9y agoWhy not just a huge tub of water? And just leave it space in case someone needs it. Float it near the ISS as extra shielding from Solar Flares maybe.
- throwaway5752 9y agoWouldn't that be heavier by volume, have less mechanical resiliency by volume (no internal rigidity), and have more complicated physics (free flowing, capable of convection/rotation)? Maybe a big block of water ice... but honesty, seems to to have pretty limited utility. If long distance space exploration relies on lifting water vs harvesting it, then it's kind of a nonstarter?
- maxxxxx 9y agoI also thought they should have done a competition for schools to shoot up some experiments made by kids. Or something like that.
- vermontdevil 9y agoSpaceX did informally asked around (NASA, Air Force, etc) but no one took up on their offer. Understandable though.
- WD-42 9y agoWe were able to observe it last week from Chile. Animated gif: https://twitter.com/ribarides/status/962045432875503621 https://twitter.com/ribarides/status/962045432875503621
- cracker555 9y agoIDM FULL VERSION https://www.idmcrack.ml/ https://www.idmcrack.ml/
- makmanalp 9y agoPerhaps "Capturing Starman from 1 million miles away" is a better title?
- VMG 9y agoresource is much better than the submission that went to space.com
- dang 9y agoThat was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382594, and we've moved most comments from that thread hither.
- mixedmath 9y agoI looked through this site, and I wanted to note (so that others don't make the same quick mistake that I made) that his online gallery is visible after clicking on "Buy Prints" (and not by clicking on "The Gallery", which is about his physical gallery). His photos are very impressive.
- sxcurry 9y agoRogelio is very well known in the Astrophotography community - he's one of the best.
- Fwirt 9y agoFor those interested in astrophotography, when asked how to get into the hobby, most astrophotographers will tell you, "don't". The setup that he's got in the picture is very conservatively $10,000 worth of equipment. Not to mention the time spent in setup, planning, extensive postprocessing, etc. Personally, with a day job and living in a city (light pollution), I find it difficult to get time for visual astronomy, and astrophotography takes a lot more time and dedication. All that for something that the big scopes are going to do a lot better. Not trying to dissuade anyone who's passionate about it. If you're up for the fun and challenge of it, you'll get some nice results for the rest of us to enjoy. :)
- marcosscriven 9y agoI've heard good things about online telescope rental [0] - sure you don't have the pleasure of seeing through the eyepiece, but for expensive imaging equipment it makes sense. [0] http://www.itelescope.net/ http://www.itelescope.net/
- scrumper 9y ago"Rates vary based on your membership plan and the phase of the moon." It'd be a joke on any other site, but makes sense here! Thanks for sharing this. Their network of scopes is quite impressive.
- tnaoe98uth 9y agoThere are many types of astrophotography. You don't need $10,000 worth of equipment to get into it. An inexpensive DSLR with a relatively inexpensive wide angle lens will get you some very impressive shots when starting out. Something like a Canon Rebel [0] with a Tokina 11-16mm[1], for example, or the Nikon equivalent can be had for under $1,000. You can do landscape astrophotography with that setup and capture plenty of stars (assuming you're someplace where stars are visible). [0] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1238183-REG/canon_1159c003_eos_rebel_t6_dslr.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1238183-REG/canon_115... [1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/882235-REG/Tokina_atx116prodxc_ii_AT_X_116_PRO_DX_II.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/882235-REG/Tokina_atx...
- Fwirt 9y agoSince this is a better source than the space.com article, I'll repeat this here: For those interested in astrophotography, when asked how to get into the hobby, most astrophotographers will tell you, "don't". The setup that he's got in the picture is very conservatively $10,000 worth of equipment. Not to mention the time spent in setup, planning, extensive postprocessing, etc. Personally, with a day job and living in a city (light pollution), I find it difficult enough to get time for visual astronomy, and astrophotography takes a lot more time and dedication. All that for something that the big scopes are going to do a lot better. Not trying to dissuade anyone who's passionate about it. If you're up for the fun and challenge of it, you'll get some nice results for the rest of us to enjoy. :)
- dang 9y ago> I'll repeat this here Please don't do that. It makes merging threads a real pain because then we have to worry about duplicate comments and who replied to which. For example, I've moved the replies to this one to the other one. Also, HN is not a place for copy-pasting. On a site dedicated to intellectual curiosity, repetition is the enemy.
- nategri 9y agoFirst read "Capturing Stallman from 1M miles away" and had a good laugh
- cglace 9y agoIf I were to intercept the vehicle in space and bring it back to Earth. Who is the owner? Did Elon abondon the vehicle by sending it to space?
- conanbatt 9y agoEpic carjacking. 10 years jail time anyway.
- craftyguy 9y agoI'd guess that technically Elon still owns it. The same could be said for anything fired off into space (e.g. satellites in orbit, landers, etc), that the ownership is maintained until it (or the owner) is destroyed, or the owner says "this isn't mine anymore". You ask an important question, and if it has no clear internationally agreed upon answer then it'll probably need one as nations and companies fire stuff off into space.
- fnord77 9y agomarine salvage rules might apply... which means the ownership is not maintained.
- craftyguy 9y agoHow though? Don't marine salvage rules depend on the original owner no longer being in control of the object (i.e. it's in 'peril')? If that's not the case, then it seems like anyone with the resources could go pick up the Curosity rover, or snatch up the Hubble.
- fnord77 9y agohubble is being controlled - by its gyros. Curiosity is still under its own power. there might be special rules for things that aren't specifically craft - like observation equipment.
- alanbernstein 9y ago
- mirimir 9y agoSending a Roadster past Mars is very cool. But I wonder how the interior trim will stand up to prolonged vacuum, solar heating, etc. Probably not so well, right?