Up At The Ranch And Beyond

[Star Tsar]

John Michael Godier's Event Horizon

Dr. Andrea Dupree | What Is Causing The Mysterious Dimming Of Betelgeuse?

Published 3rd August 2020



Why is Betelgeuse dimming?

The supergiant is going to end its life as a supernova. Is the sudden dimming a warning sign? Betelgeuse is a variable red super giant star located in the Orion constellation. Most estimations have it going supernova within the next 100,000 years, but could it be sooner? Dr. Andrea Dupree, associate director of the Center for Astrophysics at the Harvard & Smithsonian institute, joins John Michael Godier to discuss recent observations of Betelgeuse by Hubble.

Hubble Finds That Betelgeuse's Mysterious Dimming Is Due to a Traumatic Outburst:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard...matic-outburst
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/s...supernova.html

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=riImcGreWSk

[Star Tsar]

Dr Maggie Lieu

Some Stars Are Strange...

Published 6th August 2020

Some stars are strange - No I mean literally! Made from strange quarks, these hypothetical objects could be hiding in plain sight, and could even be the missing dark matter we are looking for... but what exactly are they?

Extra reading:
https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0211348
https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0407155

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qkwtsY1PtZA

[Star Tsar]

Nemesis Maturity

Skywatching September 8th - 10th

Published 7th September 2020

Sometimes some of the prettiest sights for skywatchers require no special equipment, but are best appreciated with our unaided eyes. Over the next several mornings, look eastward and you'll see the Moon rising against a background of distant stars.

The brightest of these stars is Aldebaran. It's an orange giant star in the zodiac constellation Taurus the Bull.

September 9, 2020: Between Aldebaran and the Moon, at a distance of 150 light-years, is one of the closest star clusters in our neighborhood of the Milky Way, called the Hyades. Just above the Moon is another star cluster called the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters. At 410 light-years away, this cluster is more than twice distant as the Hyades but it appears much brighter because it contains young hot stars, and is much more concentrated in volume.

If you miss the show on Wednesday, you have a second chance to see it on Thursday morning.

But wait there's more!
This must be the best part of the sky at this time of the year! You can see bright Venus , Sirius, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Procyon, Pollux, Castor, Capella light up the morning sky.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=G-rkMaJV950

[Star Tsar]

SpaceTime With Stuart Gary



Looking At The End Of The Universe

Published 29th August 2020

Covered in this episode

A new study claims the universe will end not with a bang but with a whimper facing a heat death from a black dwarf supernova
The Pentagon looking at Shooting Star military space station
The Pentagon is looking at using Sierra Nevada’s Shooting Star cargo module as the basis for a military space station.

NASA to begin operational Commercial Crew Program flights next month
NASA’s first operational Commercial Crew Program flight to the International Space Station has been tentatively slated to launch on October 23rd.

September Skywatch
September marks the spring equinox south of the equator and the autumnal in the northern hemisphere as well as the annual Aurigids and Epsilon Perseids meteor showers.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5n0j4Qubhn8

[Star Tsar]

Phys.org

'Mighty Mice' Stay Musclebound In Space

Published 7th September 2020



Bulked-up, mutant "mighty mice" held onto their muscle during a monthlong stay at the International Space Station, returning to Earth with ripped bodybuilder physiques, scientists reported Monday.

The findings hold promise for preventing muscle and bone loss in astronauts on prolonged space trips like Mars missions, as well as people on Earth who are confined to bed or need wheelchairs.

Read all about it here: https://phys.org/news/2020-09-mighty...pace-boon.html

Source Paper: https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014716117

[Star Tsar]

Galileo's Telescope

Explaining The Earth's Temperature

Published 7th September 2020

Derivation of a simple model to explain the temperature of the earth and the rest of the planets.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2095wA1YJCc

[Star Tsar]

Asteroid Station



Asteroid (2020 PT4)

Published 7th September 2020

Asteroid (2020 PT4) is set for a close approach to Earth on September 8, 2020. This object is estimated to be 200 feet in diameter and speeding over 28,000 miles per hour.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=uJ02DWlbWTI

[Star Tsar]

Sci-News.com

Astronomers Find Misaligned & Warped Protoplanetary Disk Around A Triple-Star System

Published 3rd September 2020



Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have discovered a rare circumtriple protoplanetary disk with misaligned dust rings around the young hierarchical triple system GW Orionis. They give two possible scenarios for the misalignment: either the disk was torn apart by the gravitational pull from the stars, or by a newborn planet.

Read all about it here: http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/mi...nis-08813.html

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mSRO6tehJ5M

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SEDKd1z0YwA

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=evIniOIe11s

[Star Tsar]

Podcast UFO



Paul Dean | Possible UFO Detection Documents Through FOIA

Streamed & Published 7th September 2020

Guest Paul Dean discusses what he has uncovered through Freedom of information documents, un-mined sources of government entities that have detected, tracked and made conclusions on anomalous aerial objects. There have been extremely unusual aerospace events; plus, the results of FOIA work into historical records of the USAF Space Command; NORAD; the FAA, and more.

BIO: Paul Dean is an Australian researcher who focuses on government and military involvement and response to the so-called UFO phenomena. Working alone for 20 years, Paul became an expert in official documentation related to the UFO issue. Seven years ago he began tackling the problem directly, and became instrumental in seeing that the Australian government release hitherto classified files from the Royal Australian Air Force, Air Services Australia, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, and the National Archives of Australia. He works extensively with Australian based researcher Keith Basterfield on UFO case analysis and the preservation of UFO-related records. Further, Paul started working on the US scene with "old school" researchers like Barry Greenwood, Brad Sparks and Jan Aldrich.

Paul and his team use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain records, and he is hot on the trail of 100s of never-before-seen classified military files. Recent discoveries include UFO sighting reports created during the Vietnam War, and administrative records related to a pair of highly classified "UFO tracking" programs which were ran by the US Army and US Air Force during America's involvement in that conflict. Other fresh finds include Federal Bureau of Investigation records related to the interrogation of UFO researchers in the 1970's, and a current Federal Aviation Administration system for logging military intercepts of unknown objects in America's airspace. Paul has also begun requesting UFO records from the USAF's Air Force Space Command, which will include files from the 21st Space Wing and the vital Joint Functional Component Centre for Space at Vandenburg Air Force Base. Paul believes there are likely hundreds of thousands of UFO records still held by elements of the US government, and works tirelessly to source their location and availability status. All-in-all, Paul has acquired a total of 240,000 pages of UFO-related government and military records from around the world, and tens of millions of pages of non-government UFO records, including books, newsletters, monographs, newspaper articles, case studies, letters, and magazine articles.

Show notes: https://podcastufo.com/sunday-upcoming-show-paul-dean/

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7qeGm8wtbLQ

[Star Tsar]

RadioAmericaTV

Luis Elizondo: Have UFOs Interfered With Military Assets?

Published 7th September 2020

In another special on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Sara speaks with Luis Elizando, who charged the Pentagon's investigation into UFOs. This time, Elizando goes into how UFOs may have made contact and even interfered with military assets. He also answers to whether alleged UFO abductions have ever happened.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zPh-loWC8Zs

[Star Tsar]

Fade To Black Radio



Peter Davenport | NUFORC

Recorded & Streamed 7th September 2020

Tonight, our guest is Peter Davenport, and we are going to discuss the recent Nuforc UFO reports that are making headlines around the world.

Peter has been director of the National UFO Reporting Center since 1994.

In addition to being the director of the National UFO Reporting Center, Peter has served as the director of investigations for the Washington Chapter of the Mutual UFO Network.

Peter has had an active interest in the UFO phenomenon from his early boyhood. He experienced his first UFO sighting over the St. Louis municipal airport in the summer of 1954, and he investigated his first UFO case during the summer of 1965 in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Peter has been witness to several anomalous events, possibly UFO related, including a dramatic sighting over Baja California in February 1990, and several nighttime sightings over Washington State during 1992.

Peter received his bachelor’s degrees from Stanford University in California, His graduate education and M.S. degree from the University of Washington in Seattle, as well as an M.B.A. degree in finance and international business from the Graduate School of Business.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6gFOSq0XVps

Related musical interlude

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=n0er57QmdFI

[Star Tsar]

Suspicious Observers | Space News | 8th September 2020 | Brightest Galaxy, Solar Potential, Plasma Shocker

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=PT-SLBeW9IA

[Star Tsar]

Insane Curiosity

Jupiter Facts & History

Published 8th September 2020

A key part of astronomy as a whole is knowing when people first saw and documented key objects in the sky, this of course includes the planets like Jupiter. But as history has shown us, it's not something that was discovered recently, but rather, farther into the past than you would expect.
The first finding of Jupiter dates back to at least the Babylonian astronomers of the 7th or 8th century BC. The ancient Chinese also observed the orbit of Suìxīng and established their cycle of 12 earthly branches based on its approximate number of years; the Chinese language still uses its name when referring to years of age.
By the 4th century BC, these observations had developed into the Chinese zodiac, with each year associated with a Tai Sui star and god controlling the region of the heavens opposite Jupiter's position in the night sky; these beliefs survive in some Taoist religious practices and in the East Asian zodiac's twelve animals, now often popularly assumed to be related to the arrival of the animals before Buddha. The Chinese historian Xi Zezong has claimed that Gan De, an ancient Chinese astronomer, discovered one of Jupiter's moons in 362 BC with the unaided eye. If accurate, this would predate Galileo's discovery by nearly two millennia. Though obviously this is a bit up for debate.
Either way though, as you can see, Jupiter has been known about in the sky for quite some time, with many different civilizations keeping track of it and the entities around it.

The Seasons And Orbits
In regards to our solar system, Jupiter is the biggest of our planets. It's so big you can put 1300 Earths into it with no issues. Which means that everything just has to be bigger on the planet, am I right? Well...no.
For example, in terms of its daily orbit? It rotates on its axis faster than any of the planets that we have in our system. For Jupiter, a day takes only about 10 hours. That's less than half an Earth day, and you thought time flew on our planet!
But there's a catch...because that "everything is bigger..." line does apply to how the year works on Jupiter. Given its distance from the sun, and how fast it moves, a year on Jupiter takes...12 Earth years! Or 11.86 to be a bit more precise. That means that for every 12 orbits around the sun for Earth, Jupiter will have just completed a singular loop. So as you can see, it's a bit of a tradeoff. You may have faster days on Jupiter, but you'll also have MUCH longer years.

Finally, for the seasons, the gas giants have a bit different of a system in terms to seasons. Because they are made of gas, no solid surface, and that means that their clouds dictate their seasonal outbursts as much as the sun does. To that end, Jupiter is known to be a very stormy planet, and then when it gets to a certain point near the sun, it can change in one area and be cold, while the other can be hot.
Oh, and seasons last 3 years there, so there's that.
Consider this one of the many reasons we don't see to inhabit Jupiter...for now.

The Moons
In 1610, Italian polymath Galileo Galilei discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter (now known as the Galilean moons) using a telescope; thought to be the first telescopic observation of moons other than Earth's.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=w2UKyAwipXE

[Star Tsar]

Posted by Star Tsar (here)
Phys.org

Has Earth's Oxygen Rusted The Moon For Billions Of Years?

Published 4th September 2020



To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon, according to a study published today in Science Advances led by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

Iron is highly reactive with oxygen—forming reddish rust commonly seen on Earth. The lunar surface and interior, however, are virtually devoid of oxygen, so pristine metallic iron is prevalent on the Moon and highly oxidized iron has not been confirmed in samples returned from the Apollo missions. In addition, hydrogen in solar wind blasts the lunar surface, which acts in opposition to oxidation. So, the presence of highly oxidized iron-bearing minerals, such as hematite, on the Moon is an unexpected discovery.

Read all about it here: https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-...-billions.html

Source Paper: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eaba1940

Lunar Princess

The Rust Moon

Published 8th September 2020

Scientists have discovered rust on the Moon, something they did not believe was possible!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vq0JcMHtFD8

[Star Tsar]

Phys.org

Data From Yutu-2 Suggests Top Layer Of Lunar Regolith Is Material Thrown From Nearby Crater

Published 9th September 2020



A team of researchers has found evidence suggesting that the regolith material on which the Chinese rover Yutu-2 is situated consists mainly of material that was thrown there when an asteroid struck the moon nearby. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes their analyses of data sent back by the rover and what they learned from it.

Back in late 2018, China made history by launching a probe to the far side of the moon, which subsequently released a lunar rover called Yutu-2 after it landed in January 2019. The landing site was the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin—believed to be the largest and oldest impact structure on the moon's surface. The rover was equipped with ground-penetrating radar that has been used to learn more about the materials that make up the lunar regolith.

Read all about it here: https://phys.org/news/2020-09-yutu-l...-material.html

Source Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1197-x

[Star Tsar]

Nemesis Maturity

'Second Sun' Theory Indicates That 'Planet Nine' Is Not Alone In The Outer Solar System

Published 8th September 2020

Our Sun had a companion and there could be many undiscovered dwarf planets in the outer Solar System. That’s according to a new paper from scientists from Harvard University.

Published recently in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the paper by Dr. Avi Loeb, Professor of Science at Harvard and Harvard undergraduate student Amir Siraj goes against the dominate “lone star” thinking about the Sun’s origin.

Their radical-sounding theory that the Solar System may have once been a binary star system—so consisting of two stars orbiting a common point in space—perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Source paper:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...41-8213/abac66

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P1Vc7j8x8NE

&

Something Exploded On The Far Side Of The Sun

Published 9th September 2020

Solar Minimum is not as quiet as you think. In the early hours of September 8th, something exploded on the farside of the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) saw the debris flying over the sun's western limb.

The blast site was hidden from view, so we don't know what exploded. It probably wasn't a sunspot. More likely, a filament of magnetism became unstable and erupted, hurling bits of itself and surrounding plasma into space. The fact is that the Sun is at a minimum of activity and the cause of this large explosion is not yet entirely clear.

The resulting coronal mass ejection (CME) will miss Earth. But consider this: If the explosion had occurred only a couple weeks later, when the blast site would be facing Earth, we would now be bracing for a moderately strong geomagnetic storm.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=r1ng9_JJ06A

Rerlated musical interlude:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=T_9FeMMlLZw

[Star Tsar]

Suspicious Observers | Space News | 9th September 2020 | Sun, Climate, Space Dust, MWA Hunts Aliens

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jm1feIwDqxc

[Star Tsar]

Volcano Time-Lapse

Explosions | Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala

Recorded & Published 8th September 2020

At 00:36 Hrs Guatemala time a double explosion was recorded.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iNpw9zyILIQ

&

Recorded 8th & Published 9th September 2020

Two cloud obscured explosions at 19:04 & 19:30 Hrs. Guatemala time. Clouds were a big deal last night, very few openings.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3iUeP2G1R6s

[Star Tsar]

SpaceTime With Stuart Gary



Finding Our Place In The Universe

Published 9th September 2020

Covered in this episode

Finding our place in the Universe
Deep sea ocean sediments are helping scientists better understand the complicated structure of our local galactic neighbourhood.

New Zealand’s Rocket Lab back in the air
Rocket Lab has successfully placed a new Earth observation satellite into orbit. The flight was the first since July’s failed launch attempt.

Project starship gathers pace
SpaceX boss Elon Musk says his interplanetary colonial transport rocket -- Starship could undertake its first orbital test flight as soon as next year.

Another meteor show for Sydney
Another Meteor has been spotted streaking across the Sydney night skies. The latest cosmic encounter lit up the heavens at 6 44 in the evening being witnessed by thousands of people who recorded the sky show on their cell phones and dash cams.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mIIJZTDUuHo

[Star Tsar]

SciShow Space

The Cosmic Ladder That Lets Us Map The Universe

Published 9th September 2020

Considering how massive our universe is, we know the distances to cosmic objects surprisingly well. What tools and clues do scientists use to measure distances that are so enormous they sound like made-up numbers?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rV-Z6jk9Fkw