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Old 15-01-2008, 10:23
Blackhorse47
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I think they could tell if there was any planets by their gravitational effects.
Certainly would, and in a more mundane matter most plantary orbits are elliptical so we do speed up and slow which would let us see the other side around the sun.
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Old 15-01-2008, 10:25
tvd
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Thanks, I can rest assured now there isnt another Earth tantilisingly out of reach behind the sun!
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Old 15-01-2008, 12:06
Carlos_dfc
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We are taking it up VERY seriously as a hobby

Thanks for the links
Check out my forum DD
www.astro.forum up.co.uk
Remove the space between 'forum' and 'up'
For some reason DS censors out my forum's host

Lots of very knowledgeable people on there, and very good craic - as an admin, I'm more easy-going than most other astronomy forums - and most of my members (around 500 at the mo) seem to prefer it that way

As well as my other telescopes, I'm currently in the process of building myself a very large 'Dobsonian' telescope, around an excellent mirror that I acquired last November - gonna house it in the observatory I purpose-built in tne garden last Autumn
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Old 15-01-2008, 16:54
catherine91
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I've always been fascinated by space

I got a telescope for my 7th birthday - I still have it but can't remember the last time I used it! I also made a scrapbook of pictures of planets, nebulae etc.
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Old 15-01-2008, 17:01
Blackhorse47
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Lots of very knowledgeable people on there, and very good craic - as an admin, I'm more easy-going than most other astronomy forums - and most of my members (around 500 at the mo) seem to prefer it that way
Got to ask. Are most astronomy forums a bit rowdy, then? Lots of handbags at dawn arguments about which is the best Messier number and punch-ups over reflectors versus refractors?
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Old 15-01-2008, 18:30
Carlos_dfc
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Got to ask. Are most astronomy forums a bit rowdy, then? Lots of handbags at dawn arguments about which is the best Messier number and punch-ups over reflectors versus refractors?
Haha - not quite that bad, but a few can be a bit 'stuffy', and sometimes a little strict about keeping 'on-topic'
You also get the 'equipment snobs' on some of them too.
Mine's not like that - just normal bods who enjoy looking at the night sky and/or taking pictures of it.
I don't mind if threads develop and wander way off the original topic, and the odd bit of friendly 'banter' is positively encouraged - makes for a more pleasant place to post IMHO.

In the past though, on one US astro forum, I was once serverely jumped on by a 'howling mob', for having the audacity to mention that I didn't like a particular type of mount.
Some people really need to lighten-up
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Old 16-01-2008, 17:49
Ricardodaforce
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Have any of you guys watched Al Reinert's For All Mankind or Carl Sagan's Cosmos? Essential viewing.
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Old 06-02-2008, 19:05
HenryGarten
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Did anyone see the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter the other day?
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Old 22-02-2008, 23:13
Ricardodaforce
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Let's keep this thread alive.
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Old 22-02-2008, 23:20
swingaleg
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OK then......

We had that lunar eclipse the other night which I didn't see.........but someone posted that it was the first one for 10 years or similar.


Well, I'm sure we had a thread on here about a couple of years ago when we were all watching a lunar eclipse ?

The moon turned redder and redder until it was orange........

Does anyone else remember that ?
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Old 22-02-2008, 23:23
Carlos_dfc
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Yep

There was a cracking lunar eclipse last March
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Old 22-02-2008, 23:44
swingaleg
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Yep

There was a cracking lunar eclipse last March

That'll be it then..........

It only seems like a couple of years DS time..........
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Old 23-02-2008, 10:29
Ricardodaforce
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What a job eh.
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Old 23-02-2008, 10:47
Ricardodaforce
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Do you realise that of the 12 men to walk on the moon only 9 are still alive. The youngest of those is 72, and it's now been over 35 years since the end of that grand adventure. We should have a base on Mars by now. How did we get it all so wrong.
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Old 23-02-2008, 12:29
ElMarko
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Because of political posturing (ie, once we'd reached the moon, what else would they bother doing?), funds redirected to other things declared more "important", and an over-reliance on a flawed design for a spacecraft thanks to the Department of Defense and the US Air Force.
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Old 23-02-2008, 12:40
nitpick
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Quite a good forum at www.stargazerslounge.co.uk - UK based, with many helpful and *active* amateur astronomers etc.

"American version" too at: www.cloudynights.com. But IMO a bit (expensive!) gear orientated and "fundamentalist" in their moderation style... WASP, No - POOR folks, foreigners, dirty jokes etc.
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Old 23-02-2008, 12:44
Jodie2
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Great thread I love Astronomy love reading about it
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Old 26-02-2008, 08:01
LibertyBell7
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What's the latest on the Chinese manned space program. It's been a while since they sent someone up there hasn't it.
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Old 26-02-2008, 08:09
MrsSpoon
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I am going to be a bit boring here but when I was a child.....
we had astronomy lessons at school and we learned about the constellations. If you were ever lost at sea you could find your compass points by studying the constellations.
I still remember a lot of it today.

We also learned how to remember the nine planets in order from the sun, Mercury,Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto (ok. I know, technically Pluto is not considered to be a planet anymore).
It goes like this, Many Volcanoes Erupt Mulberry Jam Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure.
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Old 26-02-2008, 08:13
Jodie2
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How far can you go up? Like say if you just kept going up in the sky would you go up forever or would it stop at some point?
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Old 26-02-2008, 08:43
LibertyBell7
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How far can you go up? Like say if you just kept going up in the sky would you go up forever or would it stop at some point?
The universe is expanding and has been since creation. The bit that is hard to grasp is that it is expanding into nothing, not into empty space, but literally nothing.
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Old 26-02-2008, 10:06
sotek
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The universe is expanding and has been since creation. The bit that is hard to grasp is that it is expanding into nothing, not into empty space, but literally nothing.
To be fair we don't really know much beyond the fact that it is expanding. Into what exactly remains unknown and it is one of the things I will probably be most sorry about when I die ... that so many of these wonderful mysteries will be unresolved in my lifetime (and probably many many more beyond mine).
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Old 26-02-2008, 10:23
LibertyBell7
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Oh I dunno, when the new particle accelerator at CERN goes live we may start to see leaps in our understanding of such matters.
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Old 26-02-2008, 11:48
Blackhorse47
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The universe is expanding and has been since creation. The bit that is hard to grasp is that it is expanding into nothing, not into empty space, but literally nothing.
The easier way to imagine it is that space is warped in a higher dimension. Gravity is strong enough to bend the normal 3-dimensions and so the combined gravitional attraction of the entire universe is enough to create an enclosed sphere. It's usually demonstrated by rolling a sheet of paper which is 2-dimensional through a third dimension so that anyone travelling in what they thought was a straight line would gradually go round the roll and end up where they started from. So in answer to the question of what would happen if you kept on going straight up you'd eventually find your feet the long way.
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Old 26-02-2008, 12:03
Carlos_dfc
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"American version" too at: www.cloudynights.com. But IMO a bit (expensive!) gear orientated and "fundamentalist" in their moderation style... WASP, No - POOR folks, foreigners, dirty jokes etc.
Yep - that was the place I mentioned further up, where I was hounded by a baying mob for admitting I wasn't keen on a particular type of telescope mount


Oh and BTW...
Link to my forum is now different - I've moved off the forum-farm onto a better host, and also taken out a domain name.
I've been checking the posting frequency on the UK astro sites - we are currently second most active UK astronomy forum
www.astrochat.co.uk/forum
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