Almost!Originally Posted by Dreamwoven
Well, almost exactly opposite London on the globe. I'm down t'other end. NZ.
Almost!
Well, almost exactly opposite London on the globe. I'm down t'other end. NZ.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
The gravitational wave observatory is interesting.
What do you view with your telescope, Atheist? I have only 7x50 binoculars which are most useful when I am in Wisconsin where the sky is dark.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Nebulae and planets, mostly. The prettiest bits, which is all any shop-bought amateur scope is good for. The moon is really cool through a good 'scope as well.
I'm inheriting $350,000,000 from Nigeria in a couple of weeks' time and I've decided I'm going to buy the Mt John observatory! One of the darkest places on the planet which is easily accessible.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
That would be amazing, to own an entire space observatory. Look forward to learning more.
From SPA (Society for Popular Astronomy) Newsletter 40
New planet, or even planets?
Papers just published* suggest that there could be a hitherto undiscovered planet or even a brown dwarf star in the outer Solar System – or, more likely, it is just a smaller asteroid much closer. One object, dubbed Gna, has appeared on observations of the variable star W Aquilae made using ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (above) on three occasions in March, April and May 2014. It had apparently moved between the first two observations, but was absent on the third. This could simply be because it is a fairly close object, a Centaur asteroid of maximum size 880 km, and had moved out of the field of view.
But the Swedish authors of the paper speculate that the movement is also consistent with a very remote planet or even a brown dwarf on the outskirts of the Solar System, though it would have to be highly variable to account for its disappearance in the third observation. However, in another paper, ALMA observers say that they have found a source close to the star Alpha Centauri, also moving over a ten-month period, which had not been previously detected. They rule out a new member of the Alpha Centauri system, but instead claim that it belongs to the Solar System, either a distant brown dwarf or a ‘super Earth’ in the Kuiper Belt.
The claims have been dismissed by other astronomers. Planetary scientist Mike Brown points out that ‘if it is true that ALMA accidentally discovered a massive outer solar system object in its tiny tiny tiny field of view that would suggest that there are something like 200,000 Earth sized planets in the outer solar system.’ This, he says, would destabilise the whole Solar System – which clearly isn’t the case.
* Technically minded readers can decide for themselves by reading the (as yet unrefereed) papers:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.02650v1.pdf
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.02652v1.pdf
Just the idea that there could be a dwarf brown star in our solar system is something I didn't even consider.
I heard, and mentioned earlier, that there could be 200 planets like Pluto that are still undiscovered. All of this lack of knowledge about objects so close to us make me wonder about the accuracy of data claimed to come from other galaxies. Although I understand that our current knowledge about the cosmic microwave background is better than our knowledge of the universe about us. That might be because there is not much left to know about it.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Yes, it underlines how limited our knowledge is of our own galaxy. Even more so of our own solar system.
In Swedish the Milky Way is called The Winter Road (Vintergatan), which is an interesting reflection of the different cultural viewpoints...
There is an interesting piece in EarthSky on Ceres, including the comment by Y. Whateley. It seems the composition of the ice on Ceres suggest its origins lie in the Kuiper Belt.
So those bright spots are believed to be magnesium salts rather than an alien structure. Maybe Velikovsky was partly right as Whateley hints. I wonder what a possible set of orbits could have been for Ceres that would take it from the Kuiper belt to the Asteroid Belt.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
The Journal Popular Astronomy has auroras as one of its special topics. I looked it up on 20 December when there was a lot of aurora activity on our latitude of 61 north. That morning at 5 am there had been a false dawn on the horizon due north of our house, a strip of clear sky, so it could have been that we saw. Dawn here in midwinter is around 9 am. There was probably colourful aurora activity, which was seen over all of Britain, even in the far south. But aurora are transitory phenomena so demand patience to watch and identify them. I can't do that as it means staying up for long hours, sacrificing sleep. This NASA page is also about auroras.
This link from your NASA link shows an aurora from space: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/...uses-an-aurora
They called this "space weather" and a "geomagnetic storm". I wonder why there are always in northern latitudes? Perhaps they are in southern latitudes as well.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
There are aurora at both poles - aurora australis is the other one.
Happy astronomical new year!
ay up
Thank you prendelemick! Happy astronomical year to you too.
This morning at 8 am it was still dark but the sun was soon going to rise. Before it did I was looking eastward out of the window at the sky lightening and for the first time I noticed the noctiluscent clouds, presaging the dawn. They were very beautiful, and I spent several minutes admiring them. Tonight had been the shortest day of the year, so it was especially welcome.
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