matty Posted January 9, 2011 Share Posted January 9, 2011 Space station & moon, solar eclipse Image in link above is from the partial solar eclipse a few days back, can see the International Space Station silhouted in the solar disc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ManxTaxPayer Posted January 9, 2011 Share Posted January 9, 2011 can see the International Space Station silhouted in the solar disc. Nah, that's definitely a TIE fighter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolley Posted January 9, 2011 Share Posted January 9, 2011 Barrie, Could you come and explain all of this expanding universe/relativity stuff for us please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted January 12, 2011 Author Share Posted January 12, 2011 I started this thread with a post about Galaxy Zoo - a crowd source site where amateurs can help astronomy by classifying galaxies. The story about Hanny's Voorwerp is a pretty amazing example of how it is possible for this involvement of the general public to actually drive science. Hanny van Arkel noticed something odd in one of the Galaxy Zoo pictures and posted a question about it on the web site of Brian May of all people (the lead guitarist of Queen and astrophysics Phd!). The result has been a real advance in science, with Hanny now a media star! So why don't you have a go looking at some of the billions of unclassified galaxies out there and see if you can spot anything unusual - it is perfectly possible you could, and imagine what it must feel like to have the Hubble Space Telescope taking pictures for you - wow beautiful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M 2.0 Posted January 12, 2011 Share Posted January 12, 2011 That's pretty cool stuff. I thought 'gas cloud' as soon as I enlarged it - maybe I should give this classification thing a go... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pragmatopian Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 There have been a glut of high-billing stories about astronomy on BBC News lately, coinciding with a meeting of the American Astronomical Society: Image of the most distant galactic cluster ever observed Masses of high resolution images of the night sky released into the public domain by Sloan Digital Sky Survey [Video relating to the same story] From which I eventually landed at this awesome visualisation of some of the Sloan data produced using Mathematica (which I've never encountered before and looks like an awesome tool for amateur astronomers (among others): commercial licensing is ridiculously expensive, but they make the same software available to hobbyists at a much more modest price). [The blurb includes a link to the blog showing how easy it was to generate this] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VinnieK Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 From which I eventually landed at this awesome visualisation of some of the Sloan data produced using Mathematica (which I've never encountered before and looks like an awesome tool for amateur astronomers (among others): commercial licensing is ridiculously expensive, but they make the same software available to hobbyists at a much more modest price). Mathematica can be absolutely terrifying, both in price and execution, so fair play if you go that route! It's not my field, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mathematica is the best and most versatile and complete application for this kind of work, but it might be worth looking at Maple and MatLab as possible alternatives (the latter of which I know has applications specifically for Astronomy) - searching for Maple + astronomy and Matlab + astronomy certainly seems to yield a lot of results (though I can't say how applicable they are to the hobbyist) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matty Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 Not quite 'astronomy', but certainly space related. There are a couple of arranged school contacts to the International Space Station (ISS) this week. Tuesday 1st Feb, morning at 7am, with a school in France- Joseph Chassigneux, located in Vinay, south-east of France, between Grenoble and Valence, and also Wednesday morning (2nd Feb) at 7.30am, with Buehl-Realschule, Dornstadt, Germany. Anyone with a handheld scanner should be able to pick these up (outdoors if using the 'rubber duck' antenna) - on 145.800mhz, FM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VinnieK Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 There have been a glut of high-billing stories about astronomy on BBC News lately, coinciding with a meeting of the American Astronomical Society: Just a thought: astronomy tends to be a bit of a poor relation amongst the physics based disciplines when it comes to funding: it gets very little private funding and is often in the front line of cuts in public funding. This is exacerbated by the current situation where applications for research grants now have to include an 'impact' assessment whereby the researcher has to estimate the economic or social impact of their research will have over a certain period of time, which typically biases the process against pure or basic science like Astronomy. The one ace up Astonomy's sleeve is that of all science it's particularly accessible and captures the imagination of the public like no other, so I wouldn't be surprised if this were partly down to a bit of a PR campaign on behalf of the discipline in the hope it'll strengthen their case with the research councils and the government. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted February 2, 2011 Author Share Posted February 2, 2011 NASA has just announced some absolutely brilliant news on planets orbiting stars elsewhere in the Milky Way. They now have 54 planets orbiting about the habitable zones of distant stars - and some of these are earth size with possibilities of liquid water. You can bet there will be one great scientific race to try to get the light spectra reflecting off these planets to try to see if they've atmospheres and what might be in them! The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter. Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter. The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky. So many planets, so many opportunities for life to appear. The trouble is the distances are so vast its highly unlikely we'll ever get to see them - we need some genius to get the warp drive working, but sadly it may well be impossible - sigh! But even so, just by observing their faint, reflected light, it is possible to understand the atmospheres around these planets and so attempt to understand their chemistry - will they show marking of life? What a challenge for aspiring scientists - to publish the first signs of life from another world! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moghrey Mie Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 NASA has just announced some absolutely brilliant news on planets orbiting stars elsewhere in the Milky Way. They now have 54 planets orbiting about the habitable zones of distant stars - and some of these are earth size with possibilities of liquid water. You can bet there will be one great scientific race to try to get the light spectra reflecting off these planets to try to see if they've atmospheres and what might be in them! The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter. Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter. The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky. So many planets, so many opportunities for life to appear. The trouble is the distances are so vast its highly unlikely we'll ever get to see them - we need some genius to get the warp drive working, but sadly it may well be impossible - sigh! But even so, just by observing their faint, reflected light, it is possible to understand the atmospheres around these planets and so attempt to understand their chemistry - will they show marking of life? What a challenge for aspiring scientists - to publish the first signs of life from another world! Great-let's go and trash another planet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VinnieK Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 But even so, just by observing their faint, reflected light, it is possible to understand the atmospheres around these planets and so attempt to understand their chemistry - will they show marking of life? What a challenge for aspiring scientists - to publish the first signs of life from another world! If it were possible to detect, it wouldn't be left to aspiring scientists That would be the domain of whichever crusty old duffer past his best that they put in charge of the whole shebang, whilst the aspiring scientists made the coffee/did the work and resigned themselves to being forever forgotten in the 'et al' bit of the citations after the principal investigators' names. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted February 9, 2011 Author Share Posted February 9, 2011 Carl Sagan certainly knew how to turn a phrase. And astrophotography can certainly awe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted April 26, 2011 Author Share Posted April 26, 2011 The sun - it really is an awesome place. Put it on 720p and put it on full screen - WOW! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b4mbi Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 I saw Saturn in my telescope for the first time last night... wooooow!! Incredible to see it with your own eyes.... 401years after Gallileo first viewed the ring system Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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