Indeed, BeethovensPiano. This follows on from Europe's Mars Express which five years ago photographed some Martian pack ice near the equator - http://www.newscientist.com/data/ima...7039-1_600.jpg and the full article is here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...a-on-mars.html.

As you can see here http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=ima...w=1024&bih=555, that frozen Martian sea is a dead ringer for the Antarctic sea apart from the red colour! That says to me that there's no shortage of water on Mars; it's just currently locked up as frozen ocean and permafrost.

Anyone who looks through a telescope or looks at pictures of galaxies in books will come across pictures of spiral galaxies such as the Whirlpool Galaxy M51 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Messier51_sRGB.jpg and the Triangulum Galaxy M33 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M33HunterWilson09.jpg.

That is perhaps how we expect galaxies to look like with the spiral starting from the galactic core. However, our very own Milky Way Galaxy isn't a standard spiral galaxy.

It turns out that our home galaxy is, in fact, a barred spiral galaxy and this is what the Milky Way Galaxy really looks like: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/imag...y_2005-590.jpg. This image was compiled by NASA from all the visual, infra red and radio wave evidence that we to date. There's more about barred spiral galaxies here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_spiral_galaxy.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over this and the Milky Way Galaxy does still look kinda cute http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/imag...y_2005-590.jpg in a galactic sort of way.

Hello all

Just wondered if any of you could help me with something i could see in the sky this morning at about 3am.

At this point, Jupiter was in the South West as was The Moon.

So any ideas what the bright blue and white pulsating looking star in the South East was?

It was moving across the sky in a speed relative to The Moon and Jupiter.

Orion was in that part of the sky at that time. Can you recognise Orion?

Yes, it was underneath Orion.

Sounds a lot like Sirius (one of the dog stars).

Thanks HenryGarten.

I've just done a bit of reading, and the position i saw last night does seem like the one of Sirius in relation to Orion.

I'd always been lead to believe that the North Star was the brightest star in the sky

Nah Sirius is the brightest star in the sky.

Significant amounts of water found on moon. See here.

Keep on seeing a split second pin prick of bright yellow light in the sky. Well I say pin prick it is closer to the size of say Jupiter when it was in the sky a few weeks ago. Maybe I'm seeing things, but it seems to happen maybe a few times a night when I'm outside having a cigarette.

Maybe a Thai lantern?

Nah, beacause it's a clear sky here, I would be able to see it moving for a while after seeing it. It's strange really, always seems to be in the same area too. Could just be a sattelite, maybe at a certain point in it's orbit it's at the perfect angle for me to see it

Keeping an ear to the ground on American radio.... its surprising how many people believe that the moon landings are one big hoax..... is it true ?
was it all a gigantic production of the Hollywood studios ?

No, it's only been in the last couple of decades that we've had the technological ability to fake things on this scale. Even then there's a lot of people out there who could spot the fakeness of it within a couple of views.

Yes 12 men landed on the moon. No doubt about it.

...in New Mexico, USA and there's more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11611630.

This new spaceport serves as a two-mile (three-kilometre) runway for the Virgin Galactic company which will offer tourist trips into space albeit for a relatively short while.

The passengers will get to see the black skies of space and the curvature of the Earth before gliding back to the ground.

hope they get to see some glittering stars out there... which is more than we got in those (fake ? ) moon pictures... just a black sky !

(I read that Kate Perry has booked a flight for her paramour.... Russell
... a snip at £200,000 ! )

No, those pictures were real all right. Just as with Earth, when the Sun is above the horizon, it can make it a tad more difficult for both humans and cameras to see the much fainter stars even if there's no atmosphere present.

On the unlit, night side of the Moon then it would be very easy to see the stars (much better than Earth!) but the astronauts had, for safety reasons, to land on the Moon and explore during the two week lunar daytime.

You need a good long-exposure camera to get stars in any dark picture, whether on the moon or not. The moon astronauts' cameras were not set up for long-exposure shots. They were set up for moon-landing action shots.

Before you embarass yourself even further I suggest you read this thread. The Last Moon Hoax Thread Ever. When you have read and understood it all I will answer any other questions you may have.

I love it when people who don't even have a rudimentary grasp of photographic exposure, then claim to be able to say that the Moon landings were faked

I enjoyed the recent BBC Four production of HG Wells' 'First Men in the Moon', if only for the closing five minutes, which captured exactly how we felt when it actually happened.

Also, the 1202 reference was inspired.

Bugger!
Missed that

Didin't realise it was on yet - must go and see if it's on iPlayer..........

edit:
Woohoo - it's there ! - that's 90 mins of my Sunday night sorted

Yay!

I'll quiz you on the 1202.

I see you are one of those people who knows what it is like to have been there at the time. It makes these conspiracy theories risible.