Astronomy/cosmology questions...

[Buster's Uncle]

The half hour between 3/4 and total DID make a huge difference in how dark it was outside.

We could have done without the slight wind, too - felt like I was gonna die, which sorta harmed my viewing enjoyment.

[E_T]

There was an eclipse and I missed it?  Granted, it was cold but could have seen it fairly well as we didn't have too much cloud cover last night...

[Elok]

Am I the only one who had good seeing for the eclipse?

My wife and elder son stayed up to watch it together.  Laz said it wasn't worth staying up so late, but he spent the whole time reading, which he would do every night if we let him.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's just what I'm about to do, until I fall asleep.

[Rusty Edge]

It was overcast, and about 3 degrees. I couldn't tell where the moon was & I went to bed. The background light here usually washes out most of the stargazing.

[Lorizael]

I went out and back in periodically during the eclipse, because it was extremely cold and windy here. Didn't get any pictures, because I didn't want to fiddle around with gadgets. Just watched through my binoculars. Nice shot, Uno.

[Unorthodox]

Nice shot, Uno.

Yeah, Clarence has really surprised me with it's moon pics. 

Makes me want to look into getting the telescope mount and trying to find a cable for my telescope again.  (it needs a serious update as it doesn't track objects properly anymore, so is fairly useless finding much beyond mars or so.  But proprietary cable interface with computer didn't come with and isn't available now.  Older telescope bought used) 

[E_T]

A Space Rock Hit The Moon During The Eclipse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smp7TqccTpY

[Buster's Uncle]

Could y'all edumacate me about why they don't wrap something like a Faraday cage -or maybe just a silvered mylar envelope- around the ISS -or one whole module, anyway- and run a current through it for a radiation shield?  Same for traveling crew capsules, though I see that's a considerably greater engineering challenge...

Like, the big short-term threat is solar flares, right?  And that's a particle radiation problem, right?  And a large/intense enough magnetic field will handle particle radiation -if not the x, gamma, etc., wave radiation- nicely.  So, this is an obvious enough thing that I figure, with fair confidence, that there were pretty definitive theoretical/engineering studies done by the time I was born in the mid-sixties, and either the power requirements are prohibitive to do that for three days of so, or there's too much wave radiation in a flare - or both.  Help me out here, if you can...

[Geo]

I'd say the ISS doesn't have power to spare for such a project?

Besides, isn't the ISS still within Earth's magnetic field? Its barely 500 clicks up...

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes, it's inside the Van Allen belts.

Still...

[Elok]

So, probably question for Lori specifically: is the Seveneves scenario plausible, in the sense that if something fragged the moon, the pieces would stay in close proximity for a bit banging into each other, but gradually break into smaller and smaller pieces?  I always found that really hard to visualize.  Threw this question out to the Slate Star Codex hivemind, but didn't get a complete answer.

[Unorthodox]

If I understand the synopsis correctly: the moon breaks into several large chunks that stay where the moon was, I'd rate it as rather impractical but technically plausible. 

Anything that would destroy the moon would most likely severely impact it's orbit.  Given some theoretical internal break up, it's theoretically possible for larger chunks to stay together (The Armageddon movie wouldn't have worked, for instance, gravity would have held the two pieces together at least enough to strike earth) However, it's far more likely that smaller pieces would be drug into a different orbit by gravity, or even ejected from orbit by the larger chunks.

Assuming the pieces somehow stayed close, those pieces would likely interact rather violently, sending hunks in all directions when they eventually collided or tossing out their smaller counterparts.  Earth would most likely be struck by a civilization ending piece from this fairly quickly. The large pieces are at least just as likely to fuse back together during these impacts as they are playing bumper cars (I haven't studied impacts at all, so just really basic knowledge of this bit, but we have plenty of evidence of collision fusing out there, it might actually be more likely), but the debris would be massive. 

If any of the pieces drifted inside the Roche limit, it would be ground up by tidal forces, eventually forming equatorial rings and likely pelting the earth.   

Lord knows what the loss/changes of lunar gravity would do to the systems here on earth.

[E_T]

As well as the effects of Earth Tidal Forces on the Lunar Debris.

[Buster's Uncle]

Could y'all edumacate me about why they don't wrap something like a Faraday cage -or maybe just a silvered mylar envelope- around the ISS -or one whole module, anyway- and run a current through it for a radiation shield?  Same for traveling crew capsules, though I see that's a considerably greater engineering challenge...

Like, the big short-term threat is solar flares, right?  And that's a particle radiation problem, right?  And a large/intense enough magnetic field will handle particle radiation -if not the x, gamma, etc., wave radiation- nicely.  So, this is an obvious enough thing that I figure, with fair confidence, that there were pretty definitive theoretical/engineering studies done by the time I was born in the mid-sixties, and either the power requirements are prohibitive to do that for three days or so, or there's too much wave radiation in a flare - or both.  Help me out here, if you can...

ANYone?

Especially Lori, maybe Uno?