Today's APOD....Please explain

[jjjnettie]

It's relation to astronomy is........:shrug:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101024.html?ref=nf

[Lester]

Its size= astronomical. Otherwise I have no idea.

[OzRob]

They have been hacked!!??

[ballaratdragons]

Coz it's a machine that changes the face of planet Earth.

That's what I read into it :shrug:

I love the name of the person who submitted it: SwapMeetDave :lol:

[TrevorW]

I've said some time ago they have lost the plot

[ballaratdragons]

Yeah, I agree.
Thousands of people probably submitted their best work in the hope of being published around the world as todays APOD!

But noooo, bloody SwapMeetDave gets his digging machine photo in. :rolleyes:

[mithrandir]

It's different (for APOD), and it is something in the universe.

[erick]

The sky is in the photograph :confused:

[jjjnettie]

SwapMeetDave is a drinking buddy of the web master?

[CometGuy]

The sky in the photograph is cloudy, something a lot of us can relate to!

[Astroman]

I am going to send in a pic of my 4yo son at the bottom of my pier hole....

[ballaratdragons]

I will post the image here so in weeks or months time when people read this thread they can see what the image was coz APOD change the image every day.

Here folks, this is the very 'astronomical' image we are talking about :screwy:

(image courtesy of APOD)

[marki]

Ah if you read the paragraph below the pic it will all make sense apparently. You see the holes this machine digs can be seen from space . They needed an astronomer to explain that :rofl:

Mark

[Phil Hart]

The image is also several years old.

[jjjnettie]

With a few adjustments, it would make a pretty good alt azi mount. I wonder what the pay load would be?

[danielsun]

:lol::lol: and put an ED80 on it.:lol:

[ChrisM]

Not only is this APOD somewhat 'off topic'; it is a repeat! Check out APOD for 22 Nov 2006 to see exactly the same picture with the same caption.

By way of interest, the excavator, which is a similar design to some used in Victoria's brown coal mines, would probably weigh 10,000 - 15,000 tonnes, and the whole superstructure that slews around (ie. your ED80 mount) would weigh many thousands of tonnes. Our much smaller versions slew on a giant bearing comprised of hundreds of 200 mm diameter steel balls.

The excavator would be powered by a long high-voltage trailing cable, and would be travelling to a new coal field - most likely.

Chris

[multiweb]

Bloody ough! Go the ED80! :P That thing looks like one of the diggers from Avatar. I reckon a couple of drunken navis got lost and crash landed on earth... :question:

[AstralTraveller]

They are very clumsy machines. I wouldn't put a scope near one.

http://www.slideshare.net/venkoos/bucket-wheel-excavator

[Screwdriverone]

Ummm, hello.....DOCS?.......

Hope you got him out OK.... ;)

By the way, that was a joke..;)

Cheers

Chris

[Screwdriverone]

Hey, I just figured it out.....

Isnt that the SUN on the left of the machine?

:)

Cheers

Chris

[spacezebra]

Yes, this is interesting - I agree not sure about the connection !! :shrug:

Cheers Petra d.

[mental4astro]

From what I can gather from the blurb, the context is in relation to the previous giants of "crawler" machines, those that transported the Apollo and Space Shuttle craft.

The image may be "a few years old", but the technology behind the NASA crawlers is much older. And the size of the newer excavators dwarf the NASA craft too.

I went on an excursion to an open cut coal mine in the Hunter Valley some 20 years ago. The excavators there are electic powered. The engineer that conducted the tour said that that when the machine was loaded and in motion, the meters at the power plant registered this as significant fluctuations within their readings. ZZAP!

[Jen]

:lol::lol::lol:

[OICURMT]

Terra-forming.

[Tom Davis]

LOL!!!

Tom

[Ric]

I remember seeing that doing the round in emails a few years ago.

Maybe no-one submitted a picture so they "dug" up the first thing they could find.

[Rick Petrie]

Looks like one of the diggers from Pandora (Avatar) as Multiweb said.
The future of Earth as at Pandora. Maybe they're looking for UNOBTANIUM.
To do with Astronomy though, I'm with Jjjnettie!!:shrug: