Astronomy

[EJG1980]

Cheers. 05:37 for the transit, set your alarms Although if the weather in the morning is like it is now, the clouds are going to cover up the Sun anyway!

[EJG1980]

I got up at sunrise to be greeted by cloud. Hoping it would clear but it blocked the whole thing for me



Sun rose nicely between the buildings as well, a lovely unobstructed view, it would have been superb with a clear sky. Ah well, time to start a big fitness regime to keep me in shape enough to make it to 2117!!

[Super Grover]

Some rather nice photos of the transit here ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-18336717

[EJG1980]

Bloody weather. Haven't been able to use my telescope once yet this month, it's June FFS!

However, today is the birthday of Charles Messier, so I thought I'd just post a few photos of my favourite Messier Objects. You can see photos of all 110 objects here. Photo spamming, begin:

Messier 104 - Sombrero Galaxy


Messier 82 - Cigar Galaxy


Messier 81 - Bode's Galaxy


Messier 57 - Ring Nebula


Messier 45 - Pleiades


Messier 42 - Orion Nebula


Messier 16 - Eagle Nebula


Messier 13 - Hercules Globular Cluster


Messier 8 - Lagoon Nebula


Messier 1 - Crab Nebula

[MisterBubbles]

Nice pictures, Ive a few favourites myself, but mostly obsure ones that are deep sky objects.

[Super Grover]

Pictures from the Mars rover. Not sure what I was expecting to see, but the landscape looks so 'normal'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18770046

[EJG1980]

I think it's a natural instinct to assume that something "alien" will look really different and out of the ordinary. When you think about it though, everything in the universe is made up of the exact same elements, so most rocky planets will probably look pretty familiar to us.

[Nijo]

Ignoring the Dark Matter problem, yes.

(80% of the matter in the universe is NOT made of anything we know of)

[EJG1980]

I thought it was more than that, something like 90 or 95%?

Anyway, yes, for anti-pedantry purposes ( ) I was talking about the stuff like hydrogen, iron, oxygen, etc., that make up stars and planets.

[kryss]

Ignoring the Dark Matter problem, yes.

(80% of the matter in the universe is NOT made of anything we know of)

Um not quite. There are more theories than ever about that, one which is quite likely in my opinion is the presence of massive cold gas filaments between galaxies. WIMPs and MACHOs don't get as much of a look in as they used to.

[Nijo]

I've not heard of that theory, but it makes sense.

The recent articles that reported on the discovery of the filaments between galaxies (e.g. this one: http://www.universetoday.com/96276/d...xies-together/) do not mention such ideas.

[EJG1980]

After the mentions in this thread I had to look up dark matter and then I had to start reading about dark energy because I wanted to know the difference between the two... I really wish I'd had an interest in physics when I was at school Still, on the plus side, at least it means there's more out there for me to learn now!

[EJG1980]

I love stuff like this: http://htwins.net/scale2/

Awesome

[MisterBubbles]

Found a great App on android which is free, also PRO version available, it called skEye, best thing about it , it has push technology which works with you phones GPS, so you can have a powerful star finder , without the need for an expensive drive, just tape your phone to you scope and your set, im going to test it soon with my Alt set up and my 3 inch refractor.

[Rossco]

So I finally got my scope. Decided to tone down my choice to get a more entry level based one without GOTO features so I can learn the skies properly then if I feel I'm into it all enough I will upgrade to a scope and mount in the ?1000+ region when the time is right.

I got the SkyWatcher Explorer 150PDS with EQ3-2 mount about 2 months ago but have been at home for about 1 week since then. I built it all up and took it outside that night but it was kinda cloudy and I didn't have a clue what I was doing either so couldn't see much!

Hopefully I'll get use out of it in the winter at least when the conditions are better for it.