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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
[...] in 2018, a group of scientists led by Lankeswar Dey, a graduate student at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, published a paper with an even more detailed model they claimed would be able to predict the timing of future flares to within four hours. In a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, those scientists report that their accurate prediction of a flare that occurred on July 31, 2019, confirms the model is correct.
The observation of that flare almost didn't happen. Because OJ 287 was on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, out of view of all telescopes on the ground and in Earth orbit, the black hole wouldn't come back into view of those telescopes until early September, long after the flare had faded. But the system was within view of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which the agency retired in January 2020.
After 16 years of operations, the spacecraft's orbit had placed it 158 million miles (254 million kilometers) from Earth, or more than 600 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. From this vantage point, Spitzer could observe the system from July 31 (the same day the flare was expected to appear) to early September, when OJ 287 would become observable to telescopes on Earth.
"When I first checked the visibility of OJ 287, I was shocked to find that it became visible to Spitzer right on the day when the next flare was predicted to occur," said Seppo Laine, an associate staff scientist at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, who oversaw Spitzer's observations of the system. "It was extremely fortunate that we would be able to capture the peak of this flare with Spitzer, because no other human-made instruments were capable of achieving this feat at that specific point in time."
There is a nice depiction of several disk crossings on YouTube.
Also at: Dancing black holes create mega flare brighter than one trillion stars
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:16PM (12 children)
It's about time that *someone* put *something* up there *somewhere* that it can observe any portion of the heavens, at any time. Geez, Louise, why isn't there something 3 months behind us in solar orbit, 6 months behind us, and 9 months behind us? OK, you don't much like that 6 months behind, because something blah blah with the sun in the way. So put something above and something below the ecliptic, along with the 3 and 9 months behind. And, wow, just think of the parallax with telescopes spread that far apart!!
Not to mention, with eyes that far out, we have a much better chance of seeing that incoming rock that will wipe life off the earth, unless we nuke it in time. (Yeah, I know, nukes are not the best tool for the job, but if it lures in some support, go for it!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:57PM (6 children)
That's the thing about space. Not much going on out there - better off right here.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 02 2020, @03:03PM (5 children)
Yeah, here we have coronavirus and stuff to make things interesting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @05:44PM (4 children)
Oh if you like Coronavirus, you're gonna love living in a space pod for 8 years.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 02 2020, @06:00PM (2 children)
Because there's huge differences between living in an Earth pod and a Space pod, amirite?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @06:06PM (1 child)
I honestly can't tell if you're trying to be funny. It sounds exactly like your normal self.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 02 2020, @07:05PM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 03 2020, @07:01AM
Non sequitur. The ping times in space are terrible.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday May 02 2020, @03:13PM (4 children)
The motivation for sending infrared telescopes like Spitzer and JWST further from Earth than other space telescopes is to protect them from the Earth's heat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitzer_Space_Telescope [wikipedia.org]
We should always have at least a few mid/far-infrared [wikipedia.org] space telescopes, but it would be more convenient to spam Hubble-like successors into low Earth orbit, covering near-infrared, visible, and ultraviolet wavelengths. Build tens or hundreds of them assembly line style. Astronomers will be able to use up all the observing time no matter how many are built.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @12:45AM (3 children)
Just flip all those spy-hubbles over.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 03 2020, @01:37AM (2 children)
It's a good thought, and it brings to mind the NRO origin of WFIRST [wikipedia.org]. But the spy equipment that is already in orbit is probably not as useful for astronomy.
The cost targets should be a lot lower. $100 million or less for better-and-larger-than-Hubble, including launch cost. Then you can spam 100 of them for the cost of a single JWST debacle.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @03:06AM (1 child)
You can indeed get pretty good costs on these if you pull the numbers out of your backside.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 03 2020, @03:15AM
Space telescopes currently aren't built using identical parts by the tens or hundreds, and the cost to launch is currently high but will drop. As for numbers, the numbers NASA pulls aren't much better:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cost_and_schedule_issues [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]