Astronomy

[mahler10th]

Thanks for that Moonshot Opus.  I wrote books on Astronomy until I was 14 years old and became convinced I should be an Astronomer and not a Cellist.  Alas I became neither.
Just thought I would show you my new desktop.

[Opus106]

Thanks for that Moonshot Opus.

You're welcome.

I wrote books on Astronomy until I was 14 years old and became convinced I should be an Astronomer and not a Cellist.  Alas I became neither.

That was about the age I began reading popular science books, not very long ago. A book filled with such amazing pictures of "Stars, Galaxies and Nebulae," by David Malin, and the ever-famous A Brief History of Time. And that's when the debate started between becoming a pure theoretical physicist and an astrophysicist, and I became neither, though I had my shot.

What were your books about? Observing or the physics?

Just thought I would show you my new desktop.

That, sir, and a request for the photo to appear in Wikipedia have made by evening. 0:)

[mahler10th]

I had a collection of old Astronomy books and a pair of WWII field binoculars which gave me a good view of the moon, a disc sighting of Venus, and not much else.  The little books I was writing included "Astronomy for beginners", "The Planets" and other things...they were not at all about the physics, which I got interested in later.  My books were so good my Mum wrote introductions to them.  lol   
But this was BEFORE the rings of Uranus were discovered in 1977, which caused quite a stir!

Astonomy, Cosmology and Astrophysics still interest me to this day. 
Re your Moonshot, I am not at all surprised it should be included in Wikipedia for more public viewing.

[Opus106]

I had a collection of old Astronomy books and a pair of WWII field binoculars which gave me a good view of the moon, a disc sighting of Venus, and not much else.  The little books I was writing included "Astronomy for beginners", "The Planets" and other things...they were not at all about the physics, which I got interested in later.  My books were so good my Mum wrote introductions to them.  lol  

That sounds like a project that could taken up again this year. (Look at sig.)

[mahler10th]

Patrick Chevalley has just released beta 0.1.6 of the upcoming version 3 of what is, in my humble opinion, the best freely available planetarium software - Cartes du Ciel.
http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/news/version_3_beta_0.1.6
I actually received an update a couple of days ago through the Ubuntu repository, even before the website was updated with the information about the new version.

Just downloaded this software and it's databases.  If all this kind of fabulous stuff was out when I was younger I don't think I would have looked back.  This is excellent software indeed.

[Ciel_Rouge]

If you like it, you might also want to try THIS:

http://stellarium.org/

[Opus106]

Herschel and Planck are set for the trip to the launchpad. I'm particularly excited about Planck and how it might (or might not) revise our understanding of the CMB and hence the early universe.

Incidentally, the namesake of the other telescope, William Herschel, was also a classical-era composer. I first came to know about him, including the fact that he was musician prior to becoming a nebula-spotter extraordinaire, in a book about the last three planets - which by today's terminology would be the last two planets and the second-largest dwarf planet. (Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.) But back then, I wasn't into any type of music. Now, searching online, I find a CD of his music in the Contemporaries of Mozart series from Chandos. Has anyone listened to his works?

[Opus106]

Awesomeness Alert

This composite image of the Tycho supernova remnant combines X-ray and infrared observations obtained with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope, respectively, and the Calar Alto observatory, Spain. It shows the scene more than four centuries after the brilliant star explosion witnessed by Tycho Brahe and other astronomers of that era.

Click here for more information and image options

[Opus106]

Comet Lulin is currently sitting next to Saturn, and just at the edge of naked-eye visibility (from reasonably dark skies). I'm going to try and get some pictures after the Brahms is over.

[Benji]

Awesomeness Alert

This composite image of the Tycho supernova remnant combines X-ray and infrared observations obtained with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope, respectively, and the Calar Alto observatory, Spain. It shows the scene more than four centuries after the brilliant star explosion witnessed by Tycho Brahe and other astronomers of that era.

Click here for more information and image options

That's a beauty all right! Looks like a halved passion fruit.

(though I feel there is something perverse about squashing something that huge into a 4x4cm picture!)

[Opus106]

(though I feel there is something perverse about squashing something that huge into a 4x4cm picture!)

There's a 11MB file that you can download to poster your wall, if you wish.


As for Lulin, I wasn't lucky. I tried 15s ISO 800 at F3.2 (max. shutter with any zoom), essentially the maximum light gathering capacity of my camera, and I couldn't notice anything even slightly resembling a green comet.

[Opus106]

Science rocks!

Nothing has been confirmed as yet, but still, when I read about so many aspects (branches) of science come together it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.  0:)

[mahler10th]

Science rocks!
Nothing has been confirmed as yet, but still, when I read about so many aspects (branches) of science come together it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.  0:)

Yes.  Science is ALWAYS progress.  I love everything about it too.
The science of Astronomy can sometimes tell us more about our past than the planet we live on.

[Opus106]

An interesting read.

Galileo's Anagrams and the Moons of Mars (Oh, and Kepler, too!)

[nut-job]

Thanks for that Moonshot Opus.  I wrote books on Astronomy until I was 14 years old and became convinced I should be an Astronomer and not a Cellist.  Alas I became neither.
Just thought I would show you my new desktop.

How did you manage to squash the moon like that?

[mahler10th]

How did you manage to squash the moon like that?

It squashed itself when I set it as a background.  I was happy with it. 

[nut-job]

It squashed itself when I set it as a background.  I was happy with it. 

That's because you asked your computer to stretch the picture to fit.

[Opus106]

To wonderful clips I found at SpaceWeather.com, today

Exhibit 1: The ISS, sporting the latest and last set of solar panels, as seen and recorded with a 5-inch telescope.

Dirk Ewers of Germany also photographed the new wings. "I caught them only one hour deployment," he says. "It is a great addition to the station - not only for the power, but also for viewers on Earth." The movie he made using a 5-inch telescope is a must-see.

ISS Clip [Direct link]

Exhibit 2: This one is super awesome!

Imagine looking up at noon and seeing a planet with four moons just 0.1 degrees from the edge of the blinding sun. Impossible? NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft did it this week.

During the 30-hour movie, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto circle Jupiter as a massive CME billows overhead. STEREO-B recorded the action on March 15th and 16th using an occulting disk to block the solar glare. This arrangment allowed STEREO's cameras to photograph moons of Jupiter eight thousand billion (8x1012) times dimmer than the adjacent sun.

STEREO's coronagraph (occulting disk+camera) is designed to monitor faint but powerful activity in the sun's outer atmosphere. The CME is a good example. With a limiting magnitude of +6.5, it can also see stars, planets, moons and comets so close to the edge of the sun, it seems impossible. In fact, it happens all the time. Browse the STEREO gallery for examples.

Clip [Direct link to Quick Time Movie file]

[Opus106]

This is from last night.

The Sisterhood



And this is the description that accompanies the pic.

I had just about enough time to get a few shots of conjunction of the Moon and the Pleiades.

The Pleiades star cluster is an open cluster: young, irregularly placed - that is, as seen from the Earth - group of the stars that were all formed in the same region of space (from the same molecular cloud, to be precise) and are gravitationally bound together, though not as tight as a globular cluster.

The Pleiades, or M45, gets its name from Greek Mythology. The seven stars that are usually easily seen with naked eyes were considered to be the seven daughters of Atlas.

In India, we call this Krithika or Karthigai.
It's in the constellation of Taurus ((V)Rishabam).

During an occultation such as this one, the stars slowly "approach" the moon, and as they reach the limb, they start to "blink" for a little time, i.e., they pass behind the mountains and other irregularities on the Moon, and then are hidden for a while. Sometime later, they emerge from the opposite end.

Since I had quite a lot of work to do yesterday, I couldn't stay and enjoy the whole show, sadly.

[Dr. Dread]

Have you found any other life out there yet?