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Old 18-01-2015, 04:07
Keyser_Soze1
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I expect that everybody on this thread knows about National Geographic's Space/Tech news archive - but if you do not it goes back to mid 2009 and there are always some really beautiful images on there - just scroll down to find something that interests you.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...pace-and-tech/
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Old 18-01-2015, 06:18
The Martian
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Mysterious Planet X May Really Lurk Undiscovered in Our Solar System

At least two planets larger than Earth likely lurk in the dark depths of space far beyond Pluto, just waiting to be discovered, a new analysis of the orbits of "extreme trans-Neptunian objects" (ETNOs) suggests.

Researchers studied 13 ETNOs — frigid bodies such as the dwarf planet Sedna that cruise around the sun at great distances in elliptical paths.

Theory predicts a certain set of details for ETNO orbits, study team members said. For example, they should have a semi-major axis, or average distance from the sun, of about 150 astronomical units (AU). (1 AU is the distance from Earth to the sun — roughly 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.) These orbits should also have an inclination, relative to the plane of the solar system, of almost 0 degrees, among other characteristics.

But the actual orbits of the 13 ETNOs are quite different, with semi-major axes ranging from 150 to 525 AU and average inclinations of about 20 degrees.
http://www.space.com/28284-planet-x-...50116_38927567

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Old 18-01-2015, 17:33
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Mysterious Planet X May Really Lurk Undiscovered in Our Solar System



http://www.space.com/28284-planet-x-...50116_38927567

Mike Brown, the discoverer of Eris (might have been the 10th Pluto-sized planet of things had turned out differently) has gone on record that he thinks that there are bodies out there in the far reaches of the solar system that are the size of Mercury and Mars. That'll open up a whole can of proverbial worms again! In the meantime, I recommend Mike Brown's book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.
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Old 18-01-2015, 18:21
Carlos_dfc
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Finally saw Comet Lovejoy late last night. Just about visible in town conditions with 10x50 binoculars, down and to the right of The Pleiades. It will be climbing even higher over the next few days, but not due to brighten much more, I believe.
Been watching it on and off for a coupla weeks now, through various optics, from 10x50 binocs right up to a 10" telescope.
It's a fairly easy naked-eye object if you can get to an out-of-town dark site - Last time I saw it (Friday night) I reckoned it to be about 4th magnitude. It was right beside delta Arietis (mag 4.3) and a tad brighter than it.
Best visuals have been through 20x80 binocs - a telescope tends to magnify it too much.

A friend of mine got this image of it when we were up at our regular dark site, last Monday night (12th)
http://s12.postimg.org/e0f2hbw59/Lovejoy_Q2.jpg
80mm f/6.9 refractor, Canon DSLR, 3 mins @ iso800
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Old 18-01-2015, 19:11
tiger2000
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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft recently began its long-awaited, historic encounter with Pluto. The spacecraft is entering the first of several approach phases that culminate July 14 with the first close-up flyby of the dwarf planet, 4.67 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers) from Earth.


“NASA first mission to distant Pluto will also be humankind’s first close up view of this cold, unexplored world in our solar system,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “The New Horizons team worked very hard to prepare for this first phase, and they did it flawlessly.”


The fastest spacecraft when it was launched, New Horizons lifted off in January 2006. It awoke from its final hibernation period last month after a voyage of more than 3 billion miles, and will soon pass close to Pluto, inside the orbits of its five known moons. In preparation

..for the close encounter, the mission’s science, engineering and spacecraft operations teams configured the piano-sized probe for distant observations of the Pluto system that start Sunday, Jan. 25 with a long-range photo shoot.

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/janua...uto-encounter/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30746650
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Old 18-01-2015, 22:17
skiprunner
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Just had to come on and tell you that my daughter has been accepted to University to study a masters degree in Pure & applied maths and Astronomy!!!!

So so so proud!!!
Sorry to hijack the thread but I am on cloud 9!!
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Old 19-01-2015, 09:54
atg
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Just had to come on and tell you that my daughter has been accepted to University to study a masters degree in Pure & applied maths and Astronomy!!!!

So so so proud!!!
Sorry to hijack the thread but I am on cloud 9!!
Well done. Where is she going?
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Old 19-01-2015, 10:38
skiprunner
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The university of Glasgow
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Old 20-01-2015, 09:49
HenryGarten
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Just had to come on and tell you that my daughter has been accepted to University to study a masters degree in Pure & applied maths and Astronomy!!!!

So so so proud!!!
Sorry to hijack the thread but I am on cloud 9!!
Great news.
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Old 20-01-2015, 09:51
HenryGarten
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Asteroid to narrowly miss the Earth

An asteroid a third of a mile wide is set to narrowly pass by Earth next week.

The rock, code-named 2004 BL86, will pass by at about three times the distance of the moon. Though that is a safe distance, it’s a close encounter for an asteroid.

On January 26, the rock will fly past about 745,000 miles from Earth

Another reference. Giant Rock headed our way
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Old 22-01-2015, 09:45
belly button
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I posted this on another thread but might be better here.

I feel overwhelmed when I watch this. Try it on a large full screen http://mic.com/articles/108854/nasa-...ace-ever-taken
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Old 22-01-2015, 19:34
Keyser_Soze1
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I posted this on another thread but might be better here.

I feel overwhelmed when I watch this. Try it on a large full screen http://mic.com/articles/108854/nasa-...ace-ever-taken
That is simply awe-inspiring and to think that is only one galaxy - it just totally staggers the imagination.

Thank you so much for posting this.

It is so very humbling and frightening in equal measure.
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Old 22-01-2015, 20:14
Eddie Badger
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Just had to come on and tell you that my daughter has been accepted to University to study a masters degree in Pure & applied maths and Astronomy!!!!

So so so proud!!!
Sorry to hijack the thread but I am on cloud 9!!
Great news. Best of luck to your daughter, I'm sure she'll do well.
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Old 22-01-2015, 20:27
belly button
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That is simply awe-inspiring and to think that is only one galaxy - it just totally staggers the imagination.

Thank you so much for posting this.

It is so very humbling and frightening in equal measure.
Hi Keyser

I've had an indulgent day today and so have watched it a few times. I was wondering how to describe my feelings when I first saw it and you are right, I think I did feel frightened.
It's been buzzing around my head all day.
Glad someone viewed it.
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Old 22-01-2015, 20:49
Keyser_Soze1
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Hi Keyser

I've had an indulgent day today and so have watched it a few times. I was wondering how to describe my feelings when I first saw it and you are right, I think I did feel frightened.
It's been buzzing around my head all day.
Glad someone viewed it.
Well I really enjoyed it - simply incredible.
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Old 25-01-2015, 09:14
tiger2000
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New Horizons to take its first long distance photographs of Pluto today...

A Nasa probe is to start photographing the icy world of Pluto, after travelling 5bn km (3bn miles) and nine years to get near the dwarf planet.

The mission to Pluto is being billed as the last great encounter in planetary exploration.

It is one of the first opportunities to study a dwarf planet up close.

The pictures are critical to enable the New Horizons probe to position itself for a closer fly-by later this year.

As the probe is still 200 million km away, Pluto will be hardly discernable in the images - just a speck of light against the stars.

But the mission team says this view is needed to help line up the spacecraft correctly for its fly-by on 14 July.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30954673
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Old 25-01-2015, 20:29
Keyser_Soze1
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New Horizons to take its first long distance photographs of Pluto today...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30954673
A very good article by the BBC.

I am really looking forward to this, when I was a child Pluto seemed to be totally out of reach as the last significant object in the Solar System - of course now we know that it is anything but.

The attempt to photograph even more distant Kuiper belt objects is also very exciting and to get to Pluto in only nine years is bloody good going - that is one fast space craft!

Old Pluto may not be a planet any more but this mission still f***ing rocks.

A few links.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ne.../#.VMVP_P6sXuI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons
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Old 25-01-2015, 22:02
TelevisionUser
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Been watching it on and off for a coupla weeks now, through various optics, from 10x50 binocs right up to a 10" telescope.
It's a fairly easy naked-eye object if you can get to an out-of-town dark site - Last time I saw it (Friday night) I reckoned it to be about 4th magnitude. It was right beside delta Arietis (mag 4.3) and a tad brighter than it.
Best visuals have been through 20x80 binocs - a telescope tends to magnify it too much.

A friend of mine got this image of it when we were up at our regular dark site, last Monday night (12th)
http://s12.postimg.org/e0f2hbw59/Lovejoy_Q2.jpg
80mm f/6.9 refractor, Canon DSLR, 3 mins @ iso800
Nice pic! I'm pleased that this modest comet wasn't hyped up and it's actually in a much better position to be seen in the northern hemisphere than the two celestial lemons that were Ison and Panstarrs back in 2013.

New Horizons to take its first long distance photographs of Pluto today...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30954673
Yes, the first pics should be back with us some time on Tuesday. My advance prediction is that Pluto (and Charon) turn out to be pretty much like Neptune's moon Triton: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/images/Triton_feat.jpg

While we're on the topic of dwarven worlds, this year sees the Dawn probe arrive at the largest asteroid Ceres and the first pictures were taken a few days ago: http://www.space.com/28336-mysteriou...-on-ceres.html

There's more about Ceres here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_%28dwarf_planet%29 and my best guess is that Ceres might look a bit like Jupiter's moon Callisto: https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitio...69callisto.gif
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Old 26-01-2015, 17:24
TelevisionUser
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I posted this on another thread but might be better here.

I feel overwhelmed when I watch this. Try it on a large full screen http://mic.com/articles/108854/nasa-...ace-ever-taken
It is good but unfortunately it only covers the core area whereas (my own view only!) the really exciting bits are the spiral arms where star formation is happening and the central galactic black hole and the Andromeda Galaxy will no doubt have a huge mofo of a black hole! (if you ever get the offer of a starship voyage to a black hole, my firm advice is to decline that nice invitation because no good will come of it)

The Andromeda Galaxy is unfortunately partly side on to us so that doesn't help matters either. Personally, I'd go with galaxies that are easier to see inside such as the side on M33 Triangulum Galaxy (northern hemisphere) and the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Linkies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4shqOBkCki8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Kvij2WJjM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7rTl136kIQ
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Old 27-01-2015, 00:12
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Asteroid 2004 BL86 has its own moon
Asteroid 2004 BL86, the stadium-sized space rock that flew nearer to Earth today than any other such large object is expected to for the next decade, also brought a surprise along with it. NASA radar images indicate that the 1,100-foot wide asteroid (not quite the size of a mountain, as numerous other headlines would have you believe) is also being orbited by a small moon roughly 230 feet across. The asteroid made its closest approach this morning, coming within 745,000 miles — or just a little over three times the distance to the moon — of our planet.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack...-its-own-moon/
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Old 27-01-2015, 04:28
Rich Tea.
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Hi Keyser

I've had an indulgent day today and so have watched it a few times. I was wondering how to describe my feelings when I first saw it and you are right, I think I did feel frightened.
It's been buzzing around my head all day.
Glad someone viewed it.
I've just viewed the clip of Andromeda too, in the middle of the night, only up and looking at this thread because of the asteroid that is meant to be visible from 1am to 6am today. No luck seeing it due to slight cloud cover.

May I ask what exactly it is about that awesome clip that frightens you especially? As I watched it the first thing that came into my head was a comment that I once heard that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach and desert in the entire world. When you consider how many grains there are in just a small child's sand castle bucket, that number is beyond comprehension. It must be a lot of noughts.
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Old 27-01-2015, 18:41
Eddie Badger
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Latest image from Ceres http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31009791
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Old 27-01-2015, 20:18
Rich Tea.
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It appears to be very round and rather less pockmarked than one imagines a typical irregular shaped asteroid.

Did anyone see it with binoculars from the UK overnight?
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Old 28-01-2015, 10:36
HenryGarten
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29 years ago today was the Challenger disaster. Probably not many people under 40 remember it.

See Challenger Disaster Live

Interestingly it was 48 years since the Apollo I disaster yesterday.
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Old 28-01-2015, 10:41
Eddie Badger
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29 years ago today was the Challenger disaster. Probably not many people under 40 remember it.

See Challenger Disaster Live

Interestingly it was 48 years since the Apollo I disaster yesterday.
I remember Apollo 1, I was 9 at the time and a real space buff. It was the first mainstream news story that really had an impact on me.

And 29 years since Challenger, time really does fly.
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