http://www.ilovehalloween.net/everyd...n-intelligence any explanations?

It's a fascinating story isn't it. I actually wrote the name of this star down on a post it note a few days ago and stuck it on my computer so I didn't forget it and read up about it. I wrote on another thread about this star that I'd worked out it was approximately 9 Quadrillion miles from Earth (9,000 Trillion miles or 9,000,000,000,000,000 miles) at just under 1,500 light years distance.

General consensus is that it's only a remote chance of being advanced civilisation. Fair enough, but why might it not be? Even when astronomers finally come into some genuinely irrefutable evidence of something clearly artificial out there, I believe there will continue to be a collective denial simply down to the staggering implications and profundity of it. My own view is that of course there are huge numbers of civilisations out there and lesser life. We just all exist in splendid isolation from each other and in different epochs that fail to overlap in the massive size and time of the cosmos.

I was listening to a podcast - Skeptics Guide To The Universe only a week ago and the consensus around the table was that we would likely discover life beyond earth within 25 years from now. They meant microbial life though. But we can hope for bigger and better can't we.

It's aliens.

We were here first! Earth was one of the first habitable planets in the universe.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...-a6701311.html

If that is true then we really are all alone in the universe - and what a mess we have made of our unique and beautiful planet.

An interesting article on supermassive stars.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151...ke-a-dust-mote

Pictures of Hurricane Patricia from the Space Station.

https://www.facebook.com/sungazing1/...34728723348626

Astronomers discover sunless planet with with clouds of molten iron

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-fife-34712877

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Arthur C. Clarke

He was a very astute man was old Arthur.

http://disparamag.com/images/2001-a-space-odyssey.jpg

Wow!

If you want to see Uranus it is just above the moon tonight.

Ah thanks for the heads up. I first saw it five years ago after years of trying when it was just above Jupiter

I suppose it might be harder since the moon might drown it out somewhat.

Some help here

Just been to take a look. It's tricky to see and I know what I'm looking for. Binoculars are essential to see it. It's also very close to the moon so the only way I could see it against the moon's glare was to move the moon just out of the field of view through the bins.

Unfortunately against the moon's glare it just looks like a very faint star at the moment. Whereas in the absence of the moon, Uranus has a distinct blue colour through binoculars or even better viewed through a small telescope. I always find it very satisfying when I manage to track it down.

A great episode of Timewatch this week focusing on Jodrell Bank and Bernard Lovell.

http://bbc.in/1WWwQ4P

Also good to see James Burke make a rare TV Appearance in the programme.

Thanks for that, tiger2000. I'll take a look at that. Jodrell Bank is well worth visiting too.

..and now for some astro news:

This one's really quite bizarre but true. Asteroid 2015 TB145 Skull was imaged by the the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico via radar reflections and it passed just under half a million kilometers, or 1.27 lunar distances, from Earth on Halloween itself: http://i.imgur.com/gwCNC48.gif

Now just how spooky is that?

A large chunk of an American space rocket has been found in the sea off the Isles of Scilly. The section of the spacecraft, measuring about 10m (32ft) by 4m (13ft), was spotted on the surface between Bryher and Tresco.

A suborbital rocket booster built by Blue Origin, an entrepreneurial space firm founded by Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, streaked into space in the skies over West Texas and descended to a pinpoint propulsive touchdown on a landing pad, the company announced Tuesday.

It's thought that the galaxy is teeming with planets--like, 100 billion of them. The Kepler telescope has spotted nearly 1,900 of these planets, but we have yet to catch a glimpse of one that's still developing. Until now, that is. As explained in a paper in Nature today, a team of researchers led by University of Arizona astronomers has become the first to directly image the dust clouds around a baby planet.

The red planet Mars is destined to become the ringed planet within 40 million years’ time, when its largest moon Phobos is torn apart, according to two scientists from the University of California, Berkeley. Potato-shaped Phobos, which is 27 kilometres across at its widest point, is gradually spiralling closer to Mars by a few centimetres every year...

The first of Europe's ExoMars missions is finally ready to get under way. This initial venture will involve a satellite going to the Red Planet to study trace gases, such as methane, in the atmosphere.

This curious galaxy — known by the seemingly random jumble of letters and numbers 2MASX J16270254+4328340 — has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope dancing the crazed dance of a galactic merger. The galaxy has merged with another galaxy leaving a fine mist, made of millions of stars, spewing from it in long trails.

Fresh off a major design review, SpaceX’s human-rated Dragon spaceship has received the first of up to six firm mission orders from NASA under the company’s $2.6 billion commercial crew contract. The structure of the commercial crew deals with SpaceX and Boeing give each company at least two — and up to six — operational crew rotation missions to the International Space Station.

As the earliest sunset of the year approaches (around 12 December in the UK) the question will no doubt be asked as to why the earliest sunset is not the same as the winter solstice?

As part of the explanation I inevitably mention the analemma of the sun.

Now the analemma of the sun is a fascinating subject. It was first photographed by Dennis de Ciccio in 1978/9

Ever since other photographers have repeated the picture but almost always from the northern hemisphere.

There was always the question as to what an analemma would look like from the southern hemisphere or Antarctica?

Well I have just noticed that an analemma from Antarctica has indeed been pictured.

See Antarctic Analemma

Pluto is a Slush Puppie - Pluto's surface may be alive thanks to planetary antifreeze.

To use an analogy, it's like using salt on icy roads to effectively lower the freezing point of the water.

In other news, the Planetary Society is pressing for a fly-by round trip of Mars as opposed to a more technically complex landing mission:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey....google.co.uk/

New clues about Ceres' bright spots
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4785

Finally, the Japanese Akatsuki probe has been put into orbit around Venus and has returned its first pictures:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...bit-first.html

The BBC are covering Tim Peake's Launch live on Tuesday Morning, BBC1@10:30am.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06sgb95

Yes, it's astro news time again:

Potentially habitable super-Earth found just 14 light-years away. Australian astronomers from the University of New South Wales have discovered the closest potentially habitable planet found outside our solar system so far, orbiting a star just 14 light-years away.

^^^ That is literally right next door in galactic terms.

Galaxy cluster survey yields 3-D view of universe’s dark side. ESO telescopes have provided an international team of astronomers with the gift of the third dimension in a plus-sized hunt for the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe — galaxy clusters.

How We’ll Live on Mars - A book review

Interestingly, Mars has a Martian day, or sol as it's called, that lasts for 24 hours and 37 minutes in Earth time so potential astronauts on the surface should have no problem adapting their circadian rhythms to Mars' day/night cycle.

There is one unfortunate bit of news to report. The future of the pioneering Arecibo Radio Telescope is uncertain:

National Science Foundation Seeks Partners To Help Run Arecibo Radio Telescope

Arecibo Observatory director quits after funding row

I would regard the closure of that facility as an act of scientific vandalism and I sincerely hope that that does not happen.

On to other matters now. The BBC's World Service is running a short series of programmes on all things space related:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03bhszp

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p039nlcv

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03b6t7p

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p039nl27 <---- That one is very good

Well worth a listen:

Start the Week. On Start the Week, as the first Briton heads into space for two decades, Andrew Marr explores the future of space travel.

Well worth watching:

Lift Off! Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, 2015: How to Survive in Space - Mon 28 Dec - Wed 30 Dec

has there been any news on what they thought was an alien mega-structure that was causing a star to dim