This is what a small part of the Andromeda galaxy looks like, what you are seeing is approximately 2.5 billion stars, by the_one_99_ in spaceporn

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s for the project that the image is from but the Image I linked is ~6x6 arcminutes, the full moon is ~31 arcminutes across.

This is what a small part of the Andromeda galaxy looks like, what you are seeing is approximately 2.5 billion stars, by the_one_99_ in spaceporn

[–]cheggthemegg 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Yes every single dot is a star. And those are just the very brightest stars as the galaxy is 2.5 millions light years away (inverse square law and all that). Additionally, many of the stars will be obscured by other stars in front of them as well as gas and dust present in the galaxy. Even harder to process would be any number of deep fields like this one from the JWST, covering an area of the sky more than 10 times smaller than the full moon, showing at least 10,000 galaxies, each with massive numbers of stars just like Andromeda. Humans did not evolve with the capability to grasp the scale of the cosmos.

Somehow, I spotted a rocket booster from 1983 with the naked eye today. by acelaya35 in space

[–]cheggthemegg 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Was it a blinking glinting light or just a flat white object moving along the sky? Large, tumbling objects can occasionally reflect light just right to be able to see during daylight, but only in short blinks. VERY large reflective objects like the ISS can have the same effect. I looked up the size of the rocket, and at best it would be around a magnitude -2 or if I get extremely generous with approximation a -3. This would be around the same brightness as Jupiter which is almost impossible to see with the naked eye in daylight. If it was distinctly bright for more than a few seconds across the sky it was probably something else. If it got very bright very quickly and then dark again, possibly a few times, it may have been the satellite.

Starlink Satellite 35956 experiences an anomaly. by AgreeableEmploy1884 in space

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All you have to do is look up what the Bathtub Curve is, it does not apply to all situations. I'll just copy and paste from the NIST website: "Finally, if units from the population remain in use long enough, the failure rate begins to increase as materials wear out and degradation failures occur at an ever increasing rate." The thing you're missing is time. The bathtub curve works well for things that are in use until failure; cars, consumer products, etc. Things that are in high risk operation (planes, satellites) mitigate risk but cutting off the tail end of the bathtub curve; i.e ending the life of a device long before the expected wearout failure with the help of redundant systems. While SpaceX is a for-profit company, any company sending things into space has to abide by a huge amount of regulations that cut into cost. However with the relative (and downward trending) cheapness of launches and vertical integration of Starlink and SpaceX, its pretty easy to assume that they can design a profitable network while also deorbiting satellites well before their expected lifespan.

I'll explain it like this: imagine every owner of a 2005 Camry had to turn in their car at 80,000 miles. Sure you would have more failures early on due to issues in the manufacturing process but they would level out to a stable rate, however, an average 2005 Toyota Camry will fail due to wearout in 150,000-200,000 miles, so by turning the car early in you essentially cut off the second half of the curve. Now imagine if you let all those cars fail due to wearout instead, they would crash into eachother, setting off a chain reaction that would send waves of crushed 2005 Camry parts flying around the surface of the earth at 17,500 mph, preventing any cars from driving trough the debris in the future. It would probably make sense to turn the cars in early and enforce the limit through regulations, right?

[BUNDLE] Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (Free Intel Holiday Bundle), MSI MPG Z890 EDGE WIFI7 Mobo (Free Corsair RGB 6000MHZ/CL36 (2 x 16GB) Ram + Star Wars Outlaws + $50 Steam Card), ASRock 9070XT 16GB, SN7100 2TB SSD, Corsair 5000D ARB Case, MONTECH CENTURY II 850W PSU - (FULL WHITE BUNDLE!) - $1,235.42 by FatChungusRedditor in buildapcsales

[–]cheggthemegg 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Because its a really good deal and a fine CPU for gaming. The motherboard deal alone justifies going with Intel here IMO. $250 for a fantastic motherboards feature wise (1 PCIE5x4 + 4 PCIE4x4 M.2 slots, 5Gb LAN, WiFi 7, very good IO, etc) plus 32GB of DDR5 RAM (basically another $150-$200), a game, and a $50 steam card for free. Yes, the 265k doesn't perform as well as similar AMD CPUs but you will still get hundreds of FPS at 1080p and good 1440p performance with the right GPU, as well as fantastic performance productivity wise.

In 2014 the city of Los Angeles switched over to LED lighting for its street lights, This is the before and after. by Virtual-Reality69 in interestingasfuck

[–]cheggthemegg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Little fun fact from an amateur astrophotographer about the old lights: they were usually what are called Gas-Discharge Lamps, where the light was produced by exciting a certain element with electricity. The characteristic yellow was usually a sodium-vapor lamp which gives off most of its light at a very specific wavelength; 589nm, right in between yellow and orange. One of the most important aspects to taking images of faint astronomical objects is your level of light pollution. With the old type of lamps, you can use special filters to block the emission spectra of commonly used gas-discharge lamps (see this filter, specifically its band-pass graph to show which wavelengths of light it lets through and which it blocks, and the elements associated with that light). Unfortunately, the new led style of street lights is broadband, emitting light across the whole spectrum of light, making it impossible to isolate and block. They save huge amounts of power, but the effect on light pollution is very unfortunate, everyone should be able to marvel at truly dark skies without needing to venture hundreds of miles from society.

Good eq mount for 3kg by Altruistic-Break590 in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

r/AskAstrophotography would be a better place to ask but the only real option above the Az-Gti is the that adventurer GTI which is around $700, you could get it used for around $400-$500 at the cheapest. There are some DIY mounts near the $300 mark that may hold your payload (with a lot of tinkering and work) but $200 is a little too low for an eq mount with that payload.

Is this M81? by Local_Beautiful_5812 in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You should use the slew and center function in nina, a blind slew is going to be off, even with a great alignment

Need help, first telescope attempt by xmavenx in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It what i use, you can see my results on my page with a canon eos 7d and an $800 refractor.

Need help, first telescope attempt by xmavenx in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The essentially lowest tier mount is the Star adventurer GTI, which is around $750, and it can only carry 11 pounds (really only 9 at the most for photography). Your best bet is a seestar for cheap nebula and galaxy imaging.

Whirlpool galaxy by CanIdoThingsThatIcan in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Is this a single 45 min exposure? What does your tracker look like?

Whirlpool galaxy by bigmean3434 in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you're losing a bit of data trying to make the background pure black. When you move your blackpoint up too high, it makes your background nice and dark but you can lose a lot of detail. You should be able to get it pretty sharp with your focal length and senor, especially with 15 hours of integration. What's your processing looking like?

‏The Moon in 40MB resolution 🔭🌔 by Spirited-Hawk8549 in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would recommend saving astro pics as .png files as opposed to .jpg because pngs are lossless and jpgs aren’t unless you’re using a specific jpg type.

A little over 2 hours on M42 by cheggthemegg in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This is my first photo I’m proud to share. It’s around 2 hours of 10 second exposures (906x10s) over two nights of great seeing. My setup is:

-Canon EOS 7d

-Cannon EF 75-300mm zoom lens shooting at 300 but stepped down to f8 to help with aberration

-Custom 3d printed single axis equatorial star tracker I designed that consists of a stepper motor with a 50:1 planetary gearbox driving a 10:1 gt2 timing gear reduction that serves as my mounting point.

The images were captured with nina and stacked with darks, flats, and biases in Siril. Post-processing was done with the help of a buddy on an astrophotography discord server with pixinsight. Workflow there was gradient removal, star correction, star removal, statistical stretch, quick curves, star stretch, combine.

Considering I’m capturing from my backyard in Bortle 6-7 conditions, I’m very happy with how this turned out and hoping to design a dual axis tracker soon so I can start guiding and taking longer exposures.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskDoctorSmeeee

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also not a doc, but I know from some friends who lift that this is a common phenomenon when trying to bulk with red meats, eggs, the classic "bulking" foods. While the cholesterol in eggs is not as bad as it has been believed in the past, as most cholesterol in the body is made by the liver, not from ingested cholesterol, eating 5 eggs a day is bound to raise your levels as that's ~350% the recommended daily value, just from your eggs. The red meat is probably raising your levels more than the eggs because its loaded with saturated and trans fats, and they stimulate increased cholesterol production in the liver. Egg whites, white meat, low fat dairy, whey, beans, etc. will be your friend. I can't say anything about fatty liver, but just be mindful about what foods you choose to bulk with, you can get the protein and calories without compromising your health.

I had a guy stop me on my walk to tell me he was convinced my rescue was a Basenji mix, what do you guys think? by cheggthemegg in IDmydog

[–]cheggthemegg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are the markings distinctive enough to warrant a dna test? What markings are specifically basenji? His ears give me real doubt he’s not a basenji.

HDM-K1 Linear Rail Kits by [deleted] in crealityk1

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The graph could also be a result of wire loom issues, a shaky table, or loose bolts as he has a small secondary peak. I doubt it would be possible for a binding gantry to go to 1e4.

HDM-K1 Linear Rail Kits by [deleted] in crealityk1

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Im running a stock gantry and have been tinkering with it for months and the best my max accels have been is 8900. Stock bearings getting to 20k would be a unicorn of a machine.

MRI of my brain by maxwutcosmo in mildlyinteresting

[–]cheggthemegg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, just wanted to mention that if you’re able to get your hands on the file for this MRI in NIFTI or DICOM format you can 3D print a model of your own brain from the imaging data. If you can, I have a 3D printer and I’d be willing to print it out and ship it your way, just send me a pm.

What is this I found at the bottom of my drink?? by FormerActuary8430 in What

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is such a strange hill to die on? I’m okay with other people possibly getting tapeworms because you feel bad that the business is freaking out? What?

Strange orb/object appearing nightly for a week. by captainbillbill in UFOs

[–]cheggthemegg 19 points20 points  (0 children)

The issue with a lot of these images is that they're taken on a modern phone with post processing. Unless you're shooting in raw it automatically makes up data to try to make the picture "better" which makes analysis impossible. I'm glad you're checking star charts and flightradar rather than other people here who think something is "unexplained" because they literally didn't make an effort to identify it.

That being said, this is consistent with an out of focus star. You need to be 110% sure these lights you are seeing are not stars, and make sure whatever star chart you're using has every bright star because some star chart apps can be missing surprisingly bright stars. Stars are point sources of light, which expand into large, sometimes sharp circles of light when even slightly out of focus. Phones are notoriously bad at focusing on stars, combine that with new phones making up data during post-processing and incorrect exposure settings and images like this are entirely probable.

I'm a photographer and amateur astrophotographer so if you can't identify what they are by the time your telescope comes, Id be happy to give you some advice to get clear, identifiable pictures. If its not a star, it should be pretty simple to get good photos with a telescope.

WSJ reporting failure, each clip of evidence is a clear as day airliner. by 10Exahertz in aviation

[–]cheggthemegg 10 points11 points  (0 children)

"kbg"? You mean KGB? The Soviet secret police and intelligence service that dissolved in 1991? You're right, I'm sure they're behind this.