Benedek 🚀

We can all learn from this: sometimes you can just not do a thing instead of grinding yourself into a fine paste and, um, forcing yourself through a tube… anyway, Be Kind To Yourself

great video!
the engines turned out pretty well too, i think it was worth the effort

YouTube video by Zenoth The future of European Spaceflight

My best video yet is now out. All about the future of European rocketry.

Watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HJX...

AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead Cursor AI tells user, “I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work.”…

What's happened here is, the latest iterations of LLMs have been trained on the web corpus, which now contains thousands of articles saying relying on LLMs is a bad idea.
arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/a...

First image from the Moon taken by Blue Ghost

source: Firefly live stream

#BGM1

And one final image from Blue Ghost on the surface of the Moon at the end of the presser

#BGM1

Meanwhile Firefly Aerospace confirmed a successfully third and final lunar orbit maneuver with a 16-second RCS burn and posted this video captured by Blue Ghost shortly after it's second lunar orbit maneuver.

Video via Firefly Aerospace on the other site.

i wonder if he wants to steal mars or just land on it

With the stuff you post, i dont think making friends on here will be difficult

Moon and Venus, with clouds coming in

And the Moon-Venus pair separately as well, at the last moment.
Canon EOS 80D, EF 70-300
28x0.8s, iso3200, f/5.6, 135mm
Stacked in ASTAP, processed in Affinity Photo 2 and Lightroom

#Astrophotography #Photography

Moon, Venus and Saturn after sunset

On Friday, I was able to catch the Moon-Venus-Saturn trio before the clouds rolled in.
Canon EOS 80D, EF 17-40
15x3.2s, ISO 1600, f/5.6, 32mm
Stacked in ASTAP, processed in Affinity Photo 2 and Lightroom

#Astrophotography #Photography

The C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) comet in October, with its antitail visible.

Lower region of the Orion constellation at 100mm, slightly cropped and slightly out of focus. You can see the M42 and M43 nebulae in the center, as well as the Flame nebula at the left end of Orion's belt. Under that, the Horsehead nebula appears very faintly as an area with slightly more intense red noise.

Probably this one, the C/2023 A3 comet. It turned out quite well considering the minimal amount of time I could put into actually prepping for and capturing it.
My Orion pic is a very close second though

The C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) comet in October, with its antitail visible.

Another astrophoto, the C/2023 A3 comet from October.

Canon EOS 80D, EF 50mm
ISO 12800/3200/1600, f/2.8/4, 54x1s
Stacked in ASTAP, processed in Affinity Photo 2 and Lightroom

I had about 5-10 minutes total to plan things, get out to shoot, and then rush to shoot at a uni event.
#astrophotography

The Flame nebula and the barely visible Horsehead nebula (crop)

The Great Orion nebula (crop)

And here is a crop of the same things at 135mm. It's sharper, but slightly less detailed in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, due to the shorter individual exposures.
Sure, these are noisy and all, but they were never meant to be a serious artistic attempt, just for testing.

The Flame nebula and the barely visible Horsehead nebula (crop)

Flame nebula and Great Orion nebula in the Orion constellation at 100mm, cropped to roughly match the image taken at 135mm.

Here is a closeup crop of the Horsehead and the Flame Nebula, and the main subject, at 100mm. It's not sharp, but "good enough" for some experimentation.
The red nebula behind the Horsehead is faint, but visible in the form of slightly more intense red noise.

I had a relatively clear sky, but the humidity was noticeable. I shot these from the backyard (Bortle 4-5) to test if my new gear is better than the old. And I think it turned out well, especially since I got the red nebula behind the Horsehead Nebula. Barely, but it is there.

Lower region of the Orion constellation at 100mm. Slightly cropped

Flame nebula and Great Orion nebula in the Orion constellation at 135mm. Cropped

The Great Orion Nebula.
Both shot with a Canon EOS 80D, an EF 70-300 and no tracking.
First shot at 100mm and 143*2s, second at 135mm and 261*1.3s. I set ISO12800 and f/5.6 for both.
Stacked in ASTAP, processed in Affinity Photo 2 and Lightroom.

Some other details below 👇🧵
#astrophotography #orion

Endurance flying near Gargantua (black hole) in Interstellar.

Endurance over Earth in Interstellar.

The watch from Interstellar

The shot of Saturn from Interstellar

“there should be an interstellar sequel”

no, perfection doesn’t need a sequel

An amateur attempt at capturing the Great Orion Nebula (M42)

Reminds me a lot of my attempt in january of 2020. Just out of curiosity, what gear and settings did you use for this one?

Here is my image for reference, its everything i could get out of it.
398x0.8s (untracked), 249mm at f5.6, Canon EOS 1100D, ISO1600, 2020.01.01, processed in Affinity Photo 2.

This is mostly to test out my new-to-me gear since the last time I made a more serious attempt at astrophotography.
I was going for the Jupiter - Hyades - Pleiades trio without tracking. Not trying nor hoping for any nebulas, just the star field to see what this lens can do and to see noise levels.

Picture of stars, with clouds coming in

howdy

I missed stargazing a lot...
Tonight I was able to catch the last half-ish hour of no clouds, and I was able to do some very basic astrophotography too. The pictures look alright at first glance, but I'll have to see what I can get out of it after processing. Not sure when that will happen though.

that wasnt on my bingo list ngl

nope. nasa is still essential and necessary to so many other cool things. i highly doubt they will axe anything more than sls, and i dont think they will even cancel that

That said, I'm usually quite busy with university things, but I'd love to chat with like-minded people. And maybe make some friend too :)

I'm also very much into space stuff. Nowdays it mostly shifted towards space exploration and spaceflight only, but back in the good old days, I used to go out stargazing too. Occasionally I'm trying to do some astrophotography when I get the chance, but it's rare when I have time and good weather.

Speaking of dorm, last year I also took up the role of sysadmin, as a way to actually get into Linux and explore this area as well, since we don't really learn about it in classes. My job here is to manage the file server of the dorm, and provide IT support when needed.

I'm also the photographer of my dorm, almost exclusively, ever since I joined up in the fall semester of 2022. I shoot almost all our events, in not quite optimal conditions. But that's how I learn, and that's why I took it up as my task. And I learned a lot, got some valuable experience out of it.

I do photography for my university's newspaper too, although mainly of cultural events and concerts, not the larger events yet.
The thing I'm most proud about this, other than shooting for a newspaper, is that I have my name on two front page images.
I even wrote a few articles when I joined, btw.

A crocus in spring

A horse in the summer sunset

A pair of snowdrops in spring

A snail I found after rain in the backyard

In my personal photography, I usually shoot whatever catches my eye, but it's mostly nature, or things in the backyard. Here are some of my favorite shots, and my Flickr page (that I should update sometime...)
www.flickr.com/photos/szbene/

Sparky, a fully electric, 100% solar-powered race boat.

Sparky, a fully electric, 100% solar-powered race boat.

Sparky, a fully electric, 100% solar-powered race boat.

Sparky, a fully electric, 100% solar-powered race boat.

I'm also the photographer of the team. I have two great solar boat race events behind me, photography wise, at least. In software, I messed up both times, but at least I learned from it.

Here are some pics of Sparky, our boat. I shot these for the team, on the race this year: