{"id":5686,"date":"2022-05-07T21:31:17","date_gmt":"2022-05-07T20:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/?p=5686"},"modified":"2022-05-30T22:25:07","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T21:25:07","slug":"pythagorean-astronomy-routine-spaceflight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/2022\/05\/07\/pythagorean-astronomy-routine-spaceflight\/","title":{"rendered":"Pythagorean Astronomy: Routine Spaceflight?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Artist\u2019s<\/a>

This artist\u2019s impression shows a two-star system where micronovae may occur. Credit: ESO\/M. Kornmesser, L. Cal\u00e7ada<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s not often that a new astronomical phenomenon is named, but this month we have a new one. The name might not be that original, but there have been the first observations of something known as a “micronova”. Lasting just a few hours, a micronova is much fainter than a typical “nova”, making them much harder to detect, and much less likely to be picked up. Chris North and Edward Gomez discuss what causes these events.<\/p>\n

Coming closer to home, spaceflight has been busy, with two missions to the Space Station in April – one part of the normal rotation of astronauts, and the other a privately-funded mission from SpaceX. Does this mean that space travel is becoming routine? And is that even a good thing?<\/p>\n

Most of our exploration of space is, of course, done by robotic spacecraft, and NASA have just announced extensions to a number of their ongoing missions. Some of which have already been going for over 20 years – take a bow, Mars Odyssey! From rovers on Mars to lunar mappers, and from asteroid encounters to voyagers into the unknown, there’s still more exciting science to come from these missions.<\/p>\n

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Listen on Spotify<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\nhttp:\/\/astrog80.astro.cf.ac.uk\/pythagoras-trousers\/mp3\/Apr2022_full_PHYSX.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
An extended edition of an original broadcast on 5th May 2022 as part of Pythagoras\u2019 Trousers on Radio Cardiff.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not often that a new astronomical phenomenon is named, but this month we have a new one. The name might not be that original, but there have been the first observations of something known as a “micronova”. Lasting just a few hours, a micronova is much fainter than a typical “nova”, making them much<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":5687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[163,238,85,240,239],"class_list":["post-5686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astronomy-2","category-pythagorean-astronomy","tag-iss","tag-micronova","tag-nasa","tag-neptune","tag-space-exploration"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hmOz-1tI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/236\/2022\/05\/micronova_eso2207a.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5686"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5697,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686\/revisions\/5697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}