The Astronomical Numbers game

[Arneb]

246 - in thousands of kilometers, distance from which (http://www.mysky.org/aa/?article_get=1&article=1439)the first close-up (http://www.mysky.org/terra/astro/4/5/2/452fae29e30303932583abcb4e168688/PIA01523.jpg)of Jupiter's satellite Europa was shot (by Voyager 2)

[jfribrg]

247 - Number of whole Earth sidereal years in Pluto's sidereal year.

248 - Approximate number of Earth tropical years in Pluto's tropical year.

[ToSeek]

249 - Number of stars in the Palm Springs Walk of Stars (http://www.palmsprings.com/stars/)

Um, maybe wrong kind of stars? Okay, then:

HO 249 - Government-published reference text (http://www.celestaire.com/catalog/Sight_Reduction/HO_249_Air_Navigation/) for celestial navigation.

[jfribrg]

250 - The amount of money, in thousands of dollars, that Middlebury College paid (http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1G1:87392708&refid=ip_encyclopedia_ hf) for their telescope.

250 - The supposedly maximum useful magnification of the 4 inch refractor TV102 (http://www.shopping.com/xPF-Televue_TV102). If it's in the ad, it has to be true.

[Arneb]

251 - years ago that a) tha Lacaille catalogue of nebular objects (mostly galactic open clusters) was published and b) the heliometer was invented by John Dollond

[Andromeda321]

252- the number of years it takes 90482 Orcus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90482_Orcus) to orbit once around the sun (this is the KBO that's likely larger than Quaoar discovered in 2/2004).

[Eroica]

253: (http://www.messier45.com/cgi-bin/dsdb/dsb.pl?ss=112579155478515&str=NGC+253) NGC 253 = The Sculptor Galaxy!


252- the number of years it takes 90482 Orcus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90482_Orcus) to orbit once around the sun (this is the KBO that's likely larger than Quaoar discovered in 2/2004).That link gives its orbital period as 247.94 years! :-k

[Andromeda321]

Really? Hmm, a few other sites said 252, sorry about that. :-?

[Arneb]

254 - Aperture, in mm, of a 10-inch light bucket 8)

[ToSeek]

255 - The largest number that can be represented in a byte of telemetry from the Hubble Space Telescope. (This is the kind of stuff I deal with every day.)

[Tensor]

256 Total number of independent components in the Reimann Curvature tensor in GR 4d spacetime.

[antoniseb]

257 - The Astronomical League, a consortium of 257 astronomy societies in the United States, has established and operates a public Internet-access remote-control telescope located at the Winer Observatory in Sonoita, Arizona. The telescope is controlled from the Dyer Observatory of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

[Andromeda321]

258- the number of light years to Spica

[miguel_montes]

259 - Asteroid 259 Aletheia is named after the Greek goddess Aletheia.

[Donnie B.]

260 - approximate number of days that Venus remains an evening or morning star before disappearing behind the Sun again.

[Bob B.]

261 - The mass in kilograms of the Mariner 4 probe; the first successful fly-by of Mars.

[Eroica]

262: STF 262, discovery code for the multiple star Iota Cassiopeiae (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/alpcvn/SIT003254.htm)

[ToSeek]

-263 degrees C - Approximate temperature of the dark molecular clouds in galaxies.

[jfribrg]

264 - Distance, in trillions of miles, between us and Upsilon Andromodae, which is the first star other than Sol, known to have multiple planets orbiting it.

[ngc3314]

3C 265 - powerful radio galaxy at redshift z=0.8, marking the transition between such galaxies nearby, mostly lying in fairly normal elliptical hosts, and the high-redshift norm of very disturbed systems. The Hubble image (http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/agn/highz.gif) shows irregular plumes of blu elight extending toward the radio lobes. These plumes are some combination of young stars, whose formation may have been triggered by ejection of the radio-emitting matter, and scattered light from a hidden quasar-like core. Polarization data indicate that scattered light is important - in which case there has been a substantial history of star formation and destruction anyway to account for all the dust tens of kpc from the core.

Markarian 266 - merging galaxy system, one with a powerful active nucleus well seen in X-rays (http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~amr/Chandra.html). There is also evidence of enormous interstellar shocks as the gas in the two galaxies crashes together. This system is also known as a powerful IR source, not lacking in plausible agents for heating all that dust.

[ToSeek]

267,000 newtons - First stage thrust for the Bumper WAC, the first American two-stage rocket (based on the V-2).

[George]

268 million miles to impact. Longest trek to a tempel - Tempel 1 by Deep Impact. :)

[Matthew]

269 double stars listed in William Herschel's 1982 guide.

[jfribrg]

269 double stars listed in William Herschel's 1982 guide.

I thought he had died a hundred years before then, but I could be mistaken.

[Eroica]

270 - STT 270 (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/bsc/HR5185.html) = Otto Struve's discoverer code for the double star Tau Bootis

[Arneb]

"Spica (a Virginis) - An eclipsing binary varying by about 0.1 mag. every 4 days; approximately 83 pc (271 light years) distant." (http://www.peripatus.gen.nz/Astronomy/SpeTypB.html)

[Gruesome]

271: The month and year Shepard and Mitchell landed at Frau Mauro

Edited: Beaten by a minute! Doh!

[antoniseb]

272: Warmest Temperature in Kelvin that is a negative number in Centigrade

273: the 3C catalog designation of my favorite nearby quasar.

[Arneb]

274 m/s^2 (= 27.9 g) Gravitational acceleration at the (no, not SOLID :rolleyes: ) surface of the Sun. Ooomph.

[ToSeek]

275 BCE - Estimated death date for the mathematician Euclid.

[antoniseb]

276 Number in the Sharpless Catalog of Barnard's loop

[Arneb]

277 - liftoff weight, in metric tonnes, of Luna 8K72 (http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/luna8k72.htm), lunar launch vehicle. Bad success rate, but launched Luna 3, the first ever successful mission to the moon and the first that returned images from the Far side (of the Moon, that is;) ).

[ToSeek]

278 - In hours, the exposure time of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/07/)

[Arneb]

279 - the temperature, in degree Fahrenheit, at which oxygen becomes liquid and thus a cryogenic rocket fuel.

[ngc3314]

279 - the temperature, in degree Fahrenheit, at which oxygen becomes liquid and thus a cryogenic rocket fuel.

Either there's a missing sign, or the ambient pressure over near Nuernberg is a lot higher than when I spent a summer there!

(And I was doing a class on spectroscopy and missed the chance to refer either to superluminal motion in 3C 279 or the bright Seyfert nucleus in Markarian 279. Gotta run my list forward some more...)

[Arneb]

My bad.

-279 ° Fahrenheit.

Sorry.

[ToSeek]

Dhofar 280 (http://www.meteorites21.com/dhofar280.htm) - Lunar meteorite found in Oman.

[Eroica]

281 - Pacman Nebula (http://www.messier45.com/cgi-bin/dsdb/dsb.pl?ss=112674946661074&id=223970&str=NGC%20281) in Cassiopeia (NGC 281).

[Fram]

Space Station SST 282 (http://www.theworld.com/~cmoore/SST282_History.htm), made by Ursa Major.

I know, not astronomy, but I couldn't resist it.

[Arneb]

283 - in thousands of km per second, the value for the speed of light obtained by James Bradley using the aberration of starlight.

[ToSeek]

284 angstroms - One of the wavelengths at which the SOHO Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) (http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/eit/) operates.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/EIT/eit003_small.gif

[Fram]

The moon of asteroid Eugenia (45) (http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~merline/press_release/) is 285 times fainter than the asteroid itself. It was the second moon of an asteroid to be found, and the first one to be found with a ground based telescope. It has been named Petit-Prince (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/p/pe/petit-prince_(asteroid)1.htm).

[ToSeek]

286 - Primary telephone exchange of the Goddard Space Flight Center. ;)

[ngc3314]

OJ 287 - quasar at redshift z=0.3 in Cancer, best known for showing unusually periodic brightness outbursts. These have led to models involving a binary supermassive black hole with a very eccentric relative orbit, in which the accretion disk around the more massive one is periodically perturbed or disrupted by close passages of the other. (I just learned that it is also known as PG 0851+202, which is only embarrassing after doing a three-year variability project involving all the Palomar-Green quasars...)

[Matthew]

William Herschel's 1982 guide.


I thought he had died a hundred years before then, but I could be mistaken.

Oops, thats a typo. And I can't find out what the actual year was. :wall:



OJ 287 - quasar at redshift z=0.3 in Cancer,

NGC-288 is a globular cluster discovered by William Herschel.

[ToSeek]

289 years - How long it would take something traveling at the speed of the Concorde to fly from the Sun out to Neptune.

[Eroica]

290 - BU 290 (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/bsc/HR8548.html), the discoverer code for the multiple star 34 Pegasi.

[Lianachan]

291 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununseptium)g/mol would be the likely atomic mass for ununseptium if we ever made it.

[ToSeek]

NGC 292 is the main body of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

[ToSeek]

293 - total number of astronaut candidates selected by NASA during the 20th century.

[ToSeek]

3C 294 (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v556n1/53611/53611.text.html) is a powerful radio galaxy.

[Saluki]

False-color image of Arp 295:

http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~jhibbard/a295/a295RGB.gif

[ngc3314]

Ooh, you guys are trying to make me embarrassed to put any 3C or Arp objects so soon again. I do have some pride, so I'll skip 3C 296 (double radio source in a paired elliptical galaxy) and go straight to number 296 (http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/img6/1966ApJS...14....1A/ARP_083:I:103a-D:a1966.jpg) in Igor Karachentsev's catalog of pairs of galaxies (http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/kpairs.cat), also known as Arp 83.

That lets me get to another personal favorite, Arp 297. This consists of two sets of interacting galaxies with notably different redshifts. The lower-redshift set is NGC 5752/4, nicely shown in a Hubble color image (http://www.astr.ua.edu/gifimages/ngc5754.html) and well fitted by a model in which they came to closest approach about 250 million years before our current view. NGC 5754 has a grand-design spiral pattern, outer tidal arms sweeping past its companion, and inner ring and bar structure. Dynamics on parade!

[ToSeek]

298 - Height of Mars Express periares, in kilometers.

[jfribrg]

299- Mass, in kg, of Surveyor 6, when it landed on the Moon. This mission also took 299.52E2 pictures of the moon.

[jfribrg]

300 - The approximate diameter, in meters, of the Erebus (http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=567531&postcount=19) crater that the Opportunity rover is currently investigating.

toSeek: you must have had a few too many for lunch. You made the above linked post, with the number 300 right there in your quote, but didn't cross-post it here. Thanks for making it so easy for me.

[ToSeek]

301 - Area code for the Goddard Space Flight Center, the astronomy department at the University of Maryland, and probably several other places of interest.

[jfribrg]

Continuing the area code theme:

302 The area code i was in when I first saw the transit of Venus.

[ToSeek]

Public law 105-303 is The Commercial Space Act of 1998, which encourages NASA and other government agencies to acquire remote sensing data from private sources where possible.

(303 is also the area code for Denver, but I think we've had enough of area codes for a while.)

[wilbut]

304 Angstroms.

SOHO/EIT images of solar material. Corresponds to temperatures of 60,000 - 80,000 degree Kelvin.

[jfribrg]

305 - Weight equivalent, in Cadillacs, of a fully fueled SRB (http://www.space.com/news/spaceshuttles/interactive_sts_boosters.html)


It would take 305 full-size Cadillac cars to balance the scale with a single solid rocket booster ready for flight.

[ToSeek]

306 km - Height of Apollo 7 perigee.

[jfribrg]

307 According to this (http://history.nasa.gov/MHR-5/part-6.htm), the duration, in seconds, of the S-IVB-202 stage acceptance firing on Nov 9, 1965.

[ToSeek]

Crater 308 (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_25.html) on the Moon.

[ToSeek]

309 - ISBN (International Standard Book Number) prefix for the National Academies Press, which publishes lots of books about space and astronomy (http://lab.nap.edu/nap-cgi/discover.cgi?term=space&restric=NAP).

[jfribrg]

310 - Body temperature, in degrees Kelvin, of a healthy astronaut.

[ToSeek]

311 miles - minimum thickness of Mercury's silicate outer shell.

[Big Brother Dunk]

312 - Time, in minutes, for light to travel from the Sun to Pluto.

[ToSeek]

312 - Time for light to travel from the Sun to Pluto.

In minutes, I would think?

[ToSeek]

2003_UB313 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_UB313) is (them's fightin' words, mister) the tenth planet.

[Big Brother Dunk]

In minutes, I would think?
Oops...yes, that would be in minutes. The original post has been edited.

[Big Brother Dunk]

314 - Diameter, in miles, of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.

[ToSeek]

315 - As of January 1, 2000, the number of known objects within 10 parsecs of our solar system.

[Eroica]

316 - NGC 316 (http://www.messier45.com/cgi-bin/dsdb/dsb.pl?ss=112896517227482&str=NGC+316), a star close to NGC 315 in Pisces, mistakenly included in Dreyer's catalog.

[ToSeek]

317 - Altitude of the Hubble Space Telescope, in nautical miles.

318 - Mass of Jupiter in Earth masses.

[ToSeek]

Arp 319 is Stephan's Quintet:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/9612/stephan_bk.gif

[genebujold]

33: The latest number of posts in the Constellations folder on the physics and astronomy bulletin board (http://astronomyphysics.com/list.php?f=11).

Well, on October 12, 2005, anyway.

[ToSeek]

We're trying to go in order, Gene. The challenge right now is to come up with a way to relate the number 320 to astronomy or space exploration.

[pghnative]

320 - top height (in kilometers) that Gene Cernan reported being able to see the Great Wall of China, according to this story here (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-04q.html) Of course, he almost certainly couldn't see the wall itself, but possibly saw differences in terrain. (e.g., farmland, towns on one side but not the other)

[Fram]

321 we have liftoff!

[pghnative]

Sorry for being selfish, but I thought these were good ones:

321 - Area code for Cape Canaveral Area
322 - difference in orbital period (in Earth days) between Mars and Earth

[ngc3314]

Arp 319 is Stephan's Quintet:



Gotta say I like that choice of image (http://www.astr.ua.edu/gifimages/stephan.html), although the old disk drive now has data to do rather better...

[ToSeek]

321 - Area code for Cape Canaveral Area

That is so cool, and apparently we have this guy (http://spaceyideas.com/publicity/chronology.html) to thank for it!

[publiusr]

323
"Buran
The government decree 1006-323 set out the development plan. The flight test plan was for first launch of the booster in 1983, with the payload being an ..."
www.astronautix.com/craft/buran.htm

[ToSeek]

AAVSO alert 324 (http://www.aavso.org/publications/alerts/alert324.shtml) is a request to support observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Pretty cool!

[Big Brother Dunk]

325 BC - The year Theophrastus first identified sunspots.

[genebujold]

"326 Days in Space" was a paper published 1988, in Science News, v. 133, n. 1, p. 7, and dealt with Artificial Gravity and the Architecture of Orbital Habitats.

[genebujold]

Senate Report 104-327 is entitled "NASA Authorizaion Act, Fiscal Yea 1997"

[ToSeek]

328 seconds - specific impulse of the Fregat upper stage (http://www.esa.int/esaME/ESAPCGT7YYC_index_0.html)

[ToSeek]

A7LB-329 is the identification number of the spacesuit the last man to step onto the Moon, Harrison Schmitt, wore.

[Big Brother Dunk]

330 degrees celsius - Average daytime temperature of Mercury.

[ToSeek]

331 - The number of pixels the Whipple Observatory 10m Gamma Ray Telescope (http://cherenkov.physics.iastate.edu/whipple_photos.html) originally had.

[Arneb]

332 - perigee, in kilometers, of Shenzhou 6 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_6), China's recently completed second manned mission to space.The reentry model returned Oct. 16, while an orbital module remains in orbit, possibley for some later rendezvous manneuver.

[ToSeek]

Launch complex 333 at Baikonur (http://www.pg.infn.it/vittori/baikonur/baikonur.htm) is used for most Proton (http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_proton.html) launches, including the one that lifted the Zarya module (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/assembly/elements/fgb/baikonur.html) to the International Space Station.

[Nereid]

334 numbered minor planets observed (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/special/CountObsByYear.txt) by Hormersdorf Observatory (so far, in 2005). This observatory has an MPC observatory code of A35.

[ToSeek]

335 nautical miles, highest altitude at which the Hubble Space Telescope has orbited.

[Eroica]

IC 336 (http://www.messier45.com/cgi-bin/dsdb/dsb.pl?ss=112993985247706&str=IC+336) - a big fat nothing in Taurus! :)

[ToSeek]

337 in arcseconds, the separation of theta1 and theta2 Tauri.

338 - Number of galaxies in Arp's Catalog Of Peculiar Galaxies (http://members.aol.com/arpgalaxy/).

[Eroica]

339 - HR 339, the Bright Star Catalog designation of Psi3 Piscium (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/bsc/HR0339.html)

[Nereid]

Comet SOHO 340 (a.k.a. C/2001 N1 (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iauc/07600/07667.html#Item2)), discovered by X. Leprette in SOHO images on 5 July, 2001, is a non-group sungrazer (http://ares.nrl.navy.mil/sungrazer/).

[Arneb]

Conspiracy! This sol 341 microscopic image (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/341/1M158461614EFF40CUP2951M2M1.JPG) from Opportunity obviously shows plant fibres - and NASA keep telling us they didn't find any life there. Hoagland to the rescue!!! :liar:

Seriously - what do think is shown in these images? :think:

[Eroica]

342 - FIN 342 (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/bsc/HR1391.html), discoverer's code for the close binary 70 Tauri (named for W. S. Finsen).

[ToSeek]

1611+343 (http://www.cv.nrao.edu/2cmsurvey/maps/1611+343.html) is a quasar with redshift 1.401

[The Mangler]

Grumman LSS Project 344 Rover (http://www.astronautix.com/craft/grur1man.htm)

[ngc3314]

3C 345 is a quasar at redshift z=0.59, notable for a rich history of ejecting superluminal blobs along a curved path (as seen from our frame of reference). This has been fit with the helical brightenings expected from MHD instabilities (according to the guy in the next office and some of his colleagues, anyway - I bow in admiration to folks who do relativistic magnetohydrodynamic stability calculations for fun or any other reason).

Here's some VLBI data (http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/alobanov/345/345.html), and a higher-resolution map including space-Earth baselines from HALCA (http://www.astrotrekking.com/e_3c345.html). The bottom of that page links to a nice movie of blobs moving outward along the jet.

[Eroica]

346: NGC 346 (http://www.messier45.com/cgi-bin/dsdb/dsb.pl?ss=113026154302938&str=NGC+346) - the largest diffuse nebula in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

[ToSeek]

Phys. Rev. D 23, 347–356 (1981) contains one of the seminal papers in modern cosmology, Alan Guth's "Inflationary universe: A possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems".

[ngc3314]

IC 348 - a striking reflection nebula (http://www.astroimages.com/ic348.htm) in Perseus, associated with a young stellar cluster or association (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v497n2/37134/37134.html). The designation has been applied to both by various people.

[ToSeek]

Barnard's Merope Nebula IC 349 in the Pleiades (http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m045_i349.html)

[pghnative]

350 km/h (http://www.nineplanets.org/venus.html) Approximate wind speed at the cloud tops of Venus.

By the way, should we agree to avoid the obvious choice for 365?

[Arneb]

By the way, should we agree to avoid the obvious choice for 365?
Yes, by all means - if someone is quicker with a better answer. :D

351 - months ago (July 1976) that Viking 1 landed on Mars

[Big Brother Dunk]

352AD - First recorded sighting of a supernova occurs in China

[Arneb]

do you remember - 353 days ago (http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/whats_up_nov8_2004.html?8112004), when you had this wonderful occultation of Jupiter by the Moon visible from the northeastern US and Canada?

[ToSeek]

354 days - length of a lunar year (12 lunar months).

[Arneb]

355 - in thousands of km, Triton (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991010.html)'s mean distance from its parent body,Neptune (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980221.html)

[ToSeek]

MACHO quasar 52.4565.356 (http://www.ociw.edu/~mgeha/MACHO/52.4565.356.html)

[ngc3314]

Markarian 357, also known as PG 0119+229, an interacting starburst galaxy at redshift z=0.053. HST has been used (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2005AJ....129.1863K&db_key=AST&high=3ea7e5a30124568) to map the UV Lyman-alpha emission line from its global starburst wind, making it a bit of an analog to some of the things we see happening at much higher redshifts. Some of the HST STIS and WFPC2 images may be seen here (http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/zhiz.html).

[Eroica]

358 - NGC 358 (http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?NGC+358), an asterism in Cassiopeia.

[ngc3314]

Wolf 359, also known as CN Leonis, is a red dwarf lying a bit less than 8 light-years from us. It is the nearest star to the Sun past the Alpha Cen system and Barnard's star. Three M dwarfs out of that number, which is in fact fewer than their numerical abundance would suggest (yeah, small-number statistics). Wolf 359 has figured in science fiction, most famously in an encounter with the Borg. It is also featured in the eponymous song (http://www.astrocappella.com/wolf359.shtml) by AstroCapella.

[Arneb]

So we've now come full circle - 360°. Congrats to jfribrg for a wonderful game! :clap: :clap: :clap:

[Tensor]

NGC 361 SMC Globluar Cluster. (http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?361)

[ToSeek]

NASA Publication SP-362: Apollo Over The Moon: A View From Orbit (online here (http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-362/cover.htm))

[Arneb]

363 - years ago that Galileo Galilei (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei) died.

[ToSeek]

364 feet - Height of a Saturn V moon rocket.

[Arneb]

365 - in ppm, "current" mean CO2 concentration in the Earth's atmosphere.

( I read the figure both for 1996 and for 1998, with upward slope of 1.5 ppm /y. That's why I put "current" between inverted commas)

See, pghnative, we did get around the obvious solution :razz:

[Arneb]

Oh yes, and 366 - number of days in a leap year :shifty: :wall::rolleyes:

[ToSeek]

367 - synodic period of Neptune and Pluto, in days.

[Arneb]

No way we'll drop this one only because ToSeek is out of town for a few days!

368 - in light years, Hipparcos-derived distance of Alycone (http://www.mistisoftware.com/astronomy/Nebulae_m45_Alcyone.htm) (Eta Tauri (http://www.astronexus.com/3duniv/img/alcyone_from_378_241_112.png)), of the wonderful Pleiades (http://hyperspace.chat.ru/pleiades-uks018.jpg) open cluster.

[jfribrg]

369 - Eccentricity, X 10^-1, of Asteroid 2002 OD20 (http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/cgi-bin/get.cgi?des=2002od20)

[Dave Mitsky]

370 - The distant gravitational lens galaxy cluster Abell 370

http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/Science/Astros/Imageofweek/ciw210200.html

Dave Mitsky

[SolusLupus]

Astronomy and Astrophysics. Vol. 371 No. 1 (May III 2001)

[jfribrg]

372 - Heliocentric orbital period of the Spitzer Space Telescope.

[SolusLupus]

New Astronomy abstracts, 373-459, October 2002 (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/bib/NewA/007-7.html)

[ToSeek]

374 - in degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature on Mercury as measured by Mariner 10.

[Arneb]

375 - in years, the average time that passes between two total solar eclipses for any one point on Earth (according to this (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/eclipse_scitues_020604-1.html) article).

[jfribrg]

376 years ago, Christiaan Huygens was born.

[ToSeek]

377,000 km - distance of moons Dione and Helene from Saturn.

[SolusLupus]

377,000 km - distance of moons Dione and Helene from Saturn.

That's kinda cheap o.O You just put a much larger number to stand in for a much smaller number. Isn't that a bit of cheating?

http://www.astronet.ru/db/xware/apod.html?page=378

378th page of Astronomy photos on this website.

[Arneb]

http://www.astronet.ru/db/xware/apod.html?page=378
378th page of Astronomy photos on this website.
Now, isn't that good news? :D


That's kinda cheap o.O You just put a much larger number to stand in for a much smaller number. Isn't that a bit of cheating?

Well, no rule against it so it will happen :o . I pulled that stunt for a number of times myself (natural satellite distances just offer themselves up for use in this game). You can put the "cheat" less baldly saying xyz-"in thousands of km". But seriously, the task is to link a number to an astronomical fact. Any imaginative way of doing it is allowed. And units are always arbitrary...

Like so: It wouldn't work with °C or Fahrenheit.
379 - in Kelvin, mean temperature of Y Andromedae C (http://www.extrasolar.net/planettour.asp?StarCatId=&PlanetId=72), the middle member of an extrasolar multiplanetary system, the first to be discovered

[LurchGS]

380 nm - the shortest wavelength in visible light (380 to 780 nm, according to NASA)

[Arneb]

381 - in megawerst, approximate Lunar aphelion distance (did I say units were arbitrary, Lonewulf? ;) )

[LurchGS]

382 - number of hours in space C. Gordon Fullerton logged before he retired

[Eroica]

383 - Abell 383 (http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/Science/Astros/Imageofweek/ciw280800.html), a massive lensing cluster of galaxies at z~0.2

[LurchGS]

384 Pounds - the weight of Mars rover package Spirit on liftoff

[Dave Mitsky]

385 - Struve 385 (ADS 2544): a binary star in Camelopardalis with a 4.2 magnitude primary and a 8.5 magnitude comes, both white, separated by 2.4" at a PA of 162 degrees.

Dave Mitsky

[Dave Mitsky]

Has this thread suffered a premature end?

Dave Mitsky

[pghnative]

386 billion billion megawatts; Solar power output.

[Joff]

by contrast...

387 degrees below zero Fahrenheit - estimated surface temperature of Pluto

[ToSeek]

SLS A-388 (http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/slsa388.htm): Proposed Air Force launch vehicle as part of Dyna-Soar program.

(I could have given the satellite distance in megameters rather than kilometers.)

[LurchGS]

389 Million Kilometers from earth to the Stardust flyby of Wild-2

[ngc3314]

3C 390.3 - a radio galaxy best known for its optical emission-line spectrum. It was odd enough that this spectrum showed broad features with double peaks (sort of what folks expected from an accretion disk), but these twin peaks appear and disappear as the central source varies (in a way not expected for being emission from the accretion disk). Further studies showed that several per cent of radio galaxies and other active nuclei have such double peaks, for reasons which remain unclear.

[Eroica]

391 - BU 391 (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/mainstars/SIT000726.htm), discovery code for the double star Kappa1 Sculptoris. Magnitudes 6.2 and 6.3, Separation 1.4'', PA 261° (1991)

[ToSeek]

Steiner model 392 binoculars (http://www.opticsplanet.net/steiner-binoculars-7x50-commander-v-w-compass.html)

[jfribrg]

393 - Diameter, in inches, of the twin Keck I and Keck II telescopes.

[Eroica]

394 - FK5 394 (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/bsc/HR4112.html), the FK5 catalog number of 36 Ursae Majoris.

[ToSeek]

0-395-081211, ISBN number of H. A Rey's classic The Stars: A New Way to See Them.

[LurchGS]

396 Feet - the vertical dimension of the balloon NASA launched in June, in Sweden, with a telescope on board to study star formation

[Eroica]

397 - 397 Vienna, an asteroid discovered on 19 December 1894 in Nice, France by prolific asteroid-hunter Auguste Charlois .

[ToSeek]

NASA Press Release 04-398 (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2004/dec/HQ_04398_MSL_Selections.html) announced the instruments to go on the Mars Science Laboratory.

[jfribrg]

399 - The number of pennies you need to buy this (http://www.optcorp.com/product.aspx?pid=815) eyeguard for your 1.25" telescope eyepiece.

[publiusr]

A 400 yr. old mystery:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/06supernova/

[LurchGS]

Telstar 401 (C-band satellite)

[Tobin Dax]

Dschubba (delta Scorpii) is 402 light years from Earth.

[LurchGS]

John O Creighton has logged 403 hours in space

[genebujold]

When looking up weather from NASA's International Space Station on USA Today, you get a "Message 404 - Error. Page not found."

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/basics/wonderquest/spastation121300.htm

[LurchGS]

IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula

[Arneb]

406 - in megameters, Lunar apogee distance.

[LurchGS]

407 - the number of feet Mars Rover Opportunity traveled on sol 396

[ngc3314]

408 Mhz is a popular frequency band (wavelength around 74 cm) for radio astronomy, particularly often used at Jodrell Bank and the MERLIN interferometry array.

[ToSeek]

Formula 409 can be used to clean your telescope tube, but probably not your mirror (http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=22990).

[LurchGS]

ok what's wrong with this picture?

http://www.nfb.org/coming/nasarelease.htm


(410 is their area code)

[ToSeek]

411 gigameters - average distance of the asteroid belt from the Sun.

[jfribrg]

412 - number of Earth orbits that the HST needed to make the final Ultra Deep Field (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/july-dec03/hubble_12-22.html) image.

[LurchGS]

Mars Rover Opportunity traveled 4.62 Km in 413 sols

[Argos]

The mean distance from Pallas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Pallas) to the Sun is 414 million kilometers [275,000,000 miles].

[ToSeek]

415 CE - Hypatia of Alexandria murdered.

[LurchGS]

The NASA Mission Reports Vol 2 (©2004) 416 pp.

[ToSeek]

The NASA Mission Reports Vol 2 (©2004) 416 pp.

Which mission?

417 - Number of steps in the checklist used (by backup command module pilot Fred Haise) to prepare the Apollo 11 command module's controls before the astronauts boarded.

[LurchGS]

IC 418: The "Spirograph" Nebula

[George]

419nm - max. sensitivity of our blue cones (S cones).

[Dave Mitsky]

IC 418: The "Spirograph" Nebula

Historic footnote: This planetary nebula was known to amateur astronomers as the Raspberry Nebula due to its unusual color long before the HST moniker was attached to it.

Sir William Herschel built over 420 telescopes.

Dave Mitsky

[Eroica]

HR 421 - Bright Star Catalog Number for 47 Ceti (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-id.pl?protocol=html&Ident=47+Ceti&NbIdent=1&Radius=10&Radius.unit=arcmin&CooFrame=FK5&CooEpoch=2000&CooEqui=2000&output.max=all&o.catall=on&output.mesdisp=N&Bibyear1=1983&Bibyear2=2005&Frame1=FK5&Frame2=FK4&Frame3=G&Equi1=2000&Equi2=1950&Equi3=2000&Epoch1=2000&Epoch2=1950&Epoch3=2000)

[ToSeek]

Before the Internet days, most NASA communications interfaces used RS-422.

[George]

And then came the RS-423. :)

[LurchGS]

Wolf 424 - only 14.2 LY away

[jfribrg]

425 - Diameter, in hundredths of an inch, of the primary mirror of my store-bought telescope.

[LurchGS]

H.R. 426 was introduced by Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Ranking Minority Member Mark Udall (D-CO). The bill would establish a program within NASA to competitively award grants for pilot projects that use government and commercial remote sensing capabilities and other sources of geospatial information to address State, local, regional and tribal agency needs. It would authorize $15 million for each of fiscal years 2006 through 2010 for the program.

[ToSeek]

427 light years - Distance of Betelgeuse from Earth.

[LurchGS]

428 Km - perigee of skylab 2 mission

[Arneb]

- 429 °F, average tempeature of the cosmic microwave background

Edit: Shoot! Wrong conversion.

Let's tke this one:
Chandra's view (http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2004/darkenergy/) of a galaxy cluster 429 quadrillion Astronomical units away.

[Eroica]

430 - IC 430 (http://www.messier45.com/cgi-bin/dsdb/dsb.pl?ss=113293917211610&str=IC+430), a bright nebula associated with the variable star V883 Orionis.

[LurchGS]

431 Million Kilometers - the distance Deep Impact traveled to get to comet Tempel 1

[Arneb]

432 - in kilomiles, the radius auf the Sun (http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/sun_worldbook.html)

[ngc3314]

SS 433 - the first-discovered (and least relativistic) of the known galactic microquasars, whose twin jets show velocities of 0.26c. Even more remarkable, the jets have cool enough gas for the first light-day or so to show clear Doppler shfts, the only one (AFAIK) from a compact object which is so obliging for observers. The jets precess in about 164 days under the influence of a companion star. Recent results seem to favor a black hole as the accreting object, but I'm not sure a neutron star can be ruled out.

[LurchGS]

434 Hungaria asteroid (one of the innermost asteroids)

[Eroica]

434 (again) - IC 434 (http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?IC+434), the bright nebula against which the Horsehead Nebula is silhouetted.

[Roy Batty]

435 miles - Titan's atmospheric shine (http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040805discoveries.html)

[LurchGS]

Gliese 436, a dim red dwarf star

[ToSeek]

437 MHz - Frequency used by the Mars Relay Communications Experiment (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1996-062A&ex=6) aboard Mars Global Surveyor (and supported by many amateur radio operators on Earth)

[ToSeek]

438 days - record for longest concurrent time spent in space, set in 1994-95 by Valeri Polyakov.

1 in 438 - odds of a space shuttle catastrophic failure, according to a 2000 NASA study.

[Eroica]

439 - an asteroid called Ohio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/439_Ohio)

[Arneb]

440 - The number assigned to astronomy in the Nippon Decimal Classification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Decimal_Classification), a library classification system

[ToSeek]

441 pounds - amount of xenon propellant required for the ion propulsion system of the Dawn mission to Ceres and Vesta.

The Nippon classification system looks like an improvement to Dewey, actually - more up-to-date if nothing else.

[ToSeek]

Jonathan's Space Report No. 442 (http://host.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back/news.442) was the last of the Gregorian second millennium.

[Dave Mitsky]

IC 443 - A supernova remnant located near Eta Geminorum

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030903.html

http://www.astrophotos.net/pages/PLANETARY/IC%20443.htm

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/B_WINTER/IC443.HTM

Dave Mitsky

[Eroica]

444 - FK5 444 = Denebola (Beta Leonis) (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/mainstars/SIT000544.htm)

[ToSeek]

445 days is the length of the longest year in history, decreed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC to bring the calendar back in line with the seasons.

[LurchGS]

section 116 of Public Law 97–446 provides for the duty-free entry into the United States of certain articles that meet the following two conditions. First, the articles must be imported for NASA for its space-related activities or the articles must be imported by another person or entity for the purpose of meeting its obligations under a launch services agreement with NASA. Second, NASA must certify to the Commissioner of Customs that the articles to be entered duty-free are to be imported to be launched into space or are spare parts or necessary and uniquely associated support equipment for use in connection with a launch into space.

[ToSeek]

Public Law 108-447 is the Consolidated Appropriations Act and contains NASA's budget for FY 2005.

[ngc3314]

I've been saving up for 450 and don't want to miss it doing a class review, so:

IC 448 is a reflection nebula in Monoceros, a piece of Lynds dark nebula 932 which is illuminated by 13 Mon.

3C 449 is a radio galaxy distinguished for the length and symmetry of its twin jets, suggesting motion of the galaxy or surrounding medium rather thn some kind of precession of the jets source.

NGC 450 (http://www.astr.ua.edu/gifimages/ngc450.html) is a nearby Sc spiral galaxy, closely paired in our view with the Sb galaxy UGC 807. Its interest lies in the fact that the redshifts of these two are substantially different, so that in the conventional view UGC 807 lies deep in the background (and is an interesting searchlight to look for dust and gas on the edge of NGC 450). There have been arguments about whether or not the distribution of star-forming regions in NGC 450 is relevant to the question.

And there's always Ray Bradbury's implied claim that most of the stuff in my office would start combustion at 451 F...

[LurchGS]

cheater! :p

the comet Tempel 1 orbits the Sun every five and a half years.NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has travelled 452 million kilometres to meet up with it,

[ToSeek]

453 CE - Theodoric II succeeds his brother Thorismund as king of the Visigoths. (I don't know what it has to do with astronomy, but it sounds cool.)

Okay:

453 degrees Celsius - average temperature on Venus

[LurchGS]

Interacting Galaxy pair NGC 454

[ToSeek]

455 hours - amount of time spent in space by former NASA Acting Administrator Frederick Gregory.

[Dave Mitsky]

Astronomy 456 - a course at the University of New Mexico

http://panda.unm.edu/Acadadv/honors.html

Dave Mitsky

[ngc3314]

NGC 457 - a very splashy star cluster in Casssiopeia, surrounding the possible member and yellowish supergiant Phi Cas. It was long known to amateur astronomers as the Owl Cluster; after 1982, the designation "ET Cluster" started to appear.

[Dave Mitsky]

More on NGC 457 (the Owl or E.T. Cluster) - a group of about 100 stars located some 9,000 light years away and a star party favorite:

http://www.backyard-astro.com/deepsky/top100/14.html

http://www.astronomical.org/portal/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=97

http://www.deep-sky.co.uk/ocluster/n457.gif

Dave Mitsky

[ToSeek]

458 (BC or CE, depending on which source you trust): The date of the oldest known text to use "0", an Indian (Jaina) text entitled the Lokavibhaaga ("The Parts of the Universe").

[LurchGS]

Mars rover Spirit films a dust devil in Gusev Crater on sol 459

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/dust-devil-4.html

[ToSeek]

Earth has 460 times the mass of Pluto.
-460 degrees Fahrenheit is absolute zero.

3C 461 (Cassiopeia A) is the strongest radio source in the sky other than the Sun.
NASA publication SP-461 discusses Pioneer Venus.

462 years ago, Copernicus misunderstood the edict "publish or perish", producing De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and then dying in the same year.
The Royal Society's Proceedings now runs to 462 volumes.

[LurchGS]

1) 463 Times ToSeek has multi-posted this thread ;)

2) Former shuttle astronaut, Michael Coats has logged 463 hours in space

3) good one on Copernicus

----\

no, no! I am the center of the universe!

[ToSeek]

464 inches is the effective aperture of the Large Binocular Telescope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Binocular_Telescope).

[ngc3314]

3C 465 (http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/atlas/object/3C465.html) is the large, distorted radio source associated with the central galaxy NGC 7720 of the cluster Abell 2634. Such distortions, for central galaxies which are unlikely to be moving fast through the cluster, are often taken to imply that the intracluster gas has signifiact bulk motions rather than being near equilibrium.

(and thanks to ToSeek for breaking that doubled pattern that I was afraid might have just been established)

[jfribrg]

466 - Frequency, in Hz, of the sound that Einstein produced whenever he played an A# note on his violin.

[ToSeek]

The F467M filter on the WF/PC II instrument aboard the Hubble Space Telescope is often used to filter for the blue element of images at wavelength 467 nanometers.

[LurchGS]

http://www.universetoday.com/html/archive/2001-0814.html


UT's 468th issue

[Dave Mitsky]

Struve 469 - a binary star in Perseus

Shouldn't posts be limited to one number at a time?

Dave Mitsky

[ToSeek]

470 AU - According to the illustrious BA (http://64.207.212.193/bad/misc/planetx/orbitmath.html), the diameter of mythical Planet X's orbit, assuming Planet X has a period of 3600 years.

[Eroica]

471 - Asteroid 471 = Papagena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/471_Papagena) (no sign of Papageno, though!).

[LurchGS]

472 miles - altitude of the DART orbit
(http://www.boersenreport.de/technology.asp?msg=004703000000001660000000000)


ISS had been in orbit 472 days when this article was written
http://www.citybeat.com/2000-03-09/scitech.shtml

[Arneb]

Hyperion (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/vg2_4397243.html), as seen by Voyager 2 (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1977-076A) at a distance of 473 megameters.

[Dave Mitsky]

NGC 474 - a shell galaxy in Pisces

http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?0474.html

http://www.skyhound.com/sh/archive/nov/NGC_470.html

Dave Mitsky

[Arneb]

Well, we can ideed get to Mars (http://www.astronautix.com/craft/stus1962.htm) - in 475 days round trip! :surprised

[ToSeek]

Martian meteorite DAG 476 is for sale (http://www.arizonaskiesmeteorites.com/AZ_Skies_Links/DAG476/).

[Eroica]

477 - FK3 catalog number for Porrima, Gamma Virginis (http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/mainstars/SIT000835.htm)

[The_Radiation_Specialist]

478 BC - The year Greek astronomer A. Plato was borned. argued that the reality we see is only a distorted shadow of the perfect ideal form. Further, he taught that the most perfect form was the circle.

[LurchGS]

Mars rover Opportunity's Solar panels' output was 479 watt hours on sol 628

[Eroica]

478 BC - The year Greek astronomer A. Plato was borned. argued that the reality we see is only a distorted shadow of the perfect ideal form. Further, he taught that the most perfect form was the circle.Wasn't Plato born in 427 BC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato)?

[ToSeek]

QB 480 - Library of Congress catalog number for works on radar astronomy.


Substitute 478:

The planet around Epsilon Eridani orbits at 478 gigameters (million kilometers) from the star itself.

[LurchGS]

481 yards - the distance from the final landing/resting point of Mars rover Opportunity and the package's parachute/backshell

Kudos to ToSeek for ... being ToSeek

[The_Radiation_Specialist]

482 degrees- Venus' surface temperature is about 482 degrees Celsius, http://seti.astrobio.net/news/article156.html

[ToSeek]

Lego set 483 (http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/483-1) is a rocket base.

[brianok]

Jupiter is on average. 484 million miles from the sun

[LurchGS]

The heart in E11-00090 is a depression located near 0.2°N, 119.3°W, and is about 485 m (1,591 ft) wide.


(heart shaped craters on Mars: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11874)

[ToSeek]

The Hubble Space Telescope primary flight computer is based on the 486 chip.

[LurchGS]

[Mars rover] Spirit traveled 302 million miles (487 million kilometers) to reach Mars after its June 10, 2003, launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

[ToSeek]

The IEEE-488 interface has been used extensively in NASA ground systems.

[LurchGS]

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-489, 20 September 2003

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/09/20/

[The_Radiation_Specialist]

490 %- Calisto's distance from Jupiter is 490% of the distance from earth to luna.

[LurchGS]

Oct. 1, 1981 - NASA personnel numbered 491.