That's no moon...

Artlav

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Hm?
Is there anything on the Hubble that can fail in such a fashion?

How they determined that "it can't be closer than 130 light-years"? Maybe a couple of asteroids met somewhere along the line of sight there, in our solar system?

Can it be a constructive interference event somewhere between a camera and the sky?
 

TSPenguin

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I am perfectly fine with the observation. Apearing for 100 days and disapearing for another 100 days. Either there is some alien sitting with a flashlight (aka death star), or we have found a new phenomena.
 

n72.75

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thats kind of odd, and kind of unerving:blink::blink::blink::blink::blink::blink::blink::blink::blink::blink::blink::blink::blink:
 

Deke

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Hm?
Is there anything on the Hubble that can fail in such a fashion?

How they determined that "it can't be closer than 130 light-years"? Maybe a couple of asteroids met somewhere along the line of sight there, in our solar system?

Can it be a constructive interference event somewhere between a camera and the sky?

I'm sure there's some sort of range finder on the Hubble that'll tell us how far something is.

Don't worry, it's no where near us. It's not even in our solar system... .Not until Emporer Palpatine gives the order...
 

Eagle

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Anyone find any information regarding its spectrum? Approximate black body radiation would be expected for a star or planetlike thing.

Spikes at certain frequencies would be very interesting. Especially if they don't match any known phenomenon.
 

astrosammy

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Cool video! That ships look much bigger when you have buildings to compare the size.
 

Linguofreak

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Hm?
Is there anything on the Hubble that can fail in such a fashion?

How they determined that "it can't be closer than 130 light-years"? Maybe a couple of asteroids met somewhere along the line of sight there, in our solar system?

Can it be a constructive interference event somewhere between a camera and the sky?

They can probably determine the minimum distance from parallax: If less than 130 ly away, there would have been a small but noticeable shift in the objects apparent location compared to the background stars over the hundred days that they were observing it due to the motion of the Earth around the sun. (Basically the same effect as what happens if you close one eye, put your finger up in front of your face, and then switch eyes. The finger appears to "move" relative to the background). Two asteroids colliding in-system would have moved quite noticably across the field of view in 100 days, and any flash from that would have lasted for a much shorter time.

I'm not sure about how they derive their maximum distance estimate.
 

Zatnikitelman

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Well, if it is heading for us, either it's really slow, or it's not going to come. At the short end of the scle, this happened atleast 130 years ago remember c?
 

Kyle

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Maybe its a comet that made it into slip-space...

Happened to me on Orbiter. Somehow, 10000x time warp doesn't mix well with 125.6 Engine power. Somehow I ended up with what might be the record for farthest out on any orbiter guy.
 

thomasantony

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Is 100 days enough time to do parallax measurements? Don't you have to have like 6 months b/w measurements to see how the thing looks from two opposite points on the Earth's orbit?

Ok. I suppose its possible to find the parallax along a chord in the Earth's orbit connecting the points corresponding to the 100-day period. Am I right?
 

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I'm not sure about how they derive their maximum distance estimate.

By the lack of hydrogen adsorption in the spectrum. If it was really far away, hydrogen floating around between the galaxies will leave its mark on the spectrum.
 

Urwumpe

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How many frames of it had been recorded?
 
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