Astronomy

[Dukasaur]

[jusplay4fun]

As I said jimbo, the topic here is Astronomy, not Astrology. I guess you failed to COMPREHEND that nuance.

Thank goodness that you do not have the same Zodiac sign as me.

My Astronomy Sign said…

It will be a smooth day for you and you will get the happiness in your life. No one will able to take your happiness from you.

Not even you!

One BIG Difference between you and me, jimb, is that my goal is not to take away happiness from anyone, not even from you. You take away happiness from many by your mere presence.

[jimboston]

As I said jimbo, the topic here is Astronomy, not Astrology. I guess you failed to COMPREHEND that nuance.

Thank goodness that you do not have the same Zodiac sign as me.

My Astronomy Sign said…

It will be a smooth day for you and you will get the happiness in your life. No one will able to take your happiness from you.

Not even you!

One BIG Difference between you and me, jimb, is that my goal is not to take away happiness from anyone, not even from you. You take away happiness from many by your mere presence.

YES!

Success… if by “may people” you mean you.

[jusplay4fun]

As I said jimbo, the topic here is Astronomy, not Astrology. I guess you failed to COMPREHEND that nuance.

Thank goodness that you do not have the same Zodiac sign as me.

My Astronomy Sign said…

It will be a smooth day for you and you will get the happiness in your life. No one will able to take your happiness from you.

Not even you!

One BIG Difference between you and me, jimb, is that my goal is not to take away happiness from anyone, not even from you. You take away happiness from many by your mere presence.

YES!

Success… if by “may people” you mean you.

What are “may people” ? I said many. Did you FAIL Reading comprehension again? or spelling TOO?

Finding your mistakes, Reading comprehension, grammar, punctuation, and spelling is like shooting fish in a barrel. WAY too easy.

[jimboston]

Another typo on an iPad… I am obviously soooo dumb.

[jusplay4fun]

Another typo on an iPad… I am obviously soooo dumb.

You said it, jimbo; another mistake by you. I am glad that you got that out. Do you want to confess more shortcomings? Is this the right time for such revelations?

Someone is knocking on that Door jimb. I think this person wants to talk to you and not to your wife.

[jimboston]

Another typo on an iPad… I am obviously soooo dumb.

You said it, jimbo; another mistake by you. I am glad that you got that out. Do you want to confess more shortcomings? Is this the right time for such revelations?

Someone is knocking on that Door jimb. I think this person wants to talk to you and not to your wife.

Your attempt at stealing Mookie;s joke is lame.

Not as lame as your belief that typo = dumb.

[jusplay4fun]

Another typo on an iPad… I am obviously soooo dumb.

You said it, jimbo; another mistake by you. I am glad that you got that out. Do you want to confess more shortcomings? Is this the right time for such revelations?

Someone is knocking on that Door jimb. I think this person wants to talk to you and not to your wife.

Your attempt at stealing Mookie;s joke is lame.

Not as lame as your belief that typo = dumb.

As I have said before, jimbo, it is NOT JUST the ONE Typo, but the repeated carelessness that this error demonstrates. I said then that this typo gives evidence of your careless thought pattern, the shallowness of your (poor) analysis, and your lack of logic. Sloppy writing emanates from YOUR sloppy mind. Your careless writing manifests the careless and sloppy thinking that you do. THAT is the key point that you keep MISSING.

Nothing has changed since I pointed this out to you earlier. It seems you failed to comprehend the nature of your errors and what they reveal about your careless mind that is THUS prone to many other errors. And you must have typed that response so fast that you made another punctuation error. It merely proves my point.

QED

Whether the joke is lame or not, the JOKE ON YOU. You get annoyed that the joke is repeated. Go answer the knock at the door, jimb.

And your lack of knowledge of Astronomy and Science becomes more apparent as you continue to post CRAP in this thread. What you post are insults and also show your ignorance of the Topic of this thread. Confine your opinions to the realms of your knowledge.

FACE IT, jimb, you are simply outclassed here and in many other threads in this Forum.

[jusplay4fun]

UNDERSTANDING THE TAILS OF COMET ZTF (C/2022 E3)
BY: BOB KING FEBRUARY 1, 2023

With the Moon approaching full phase, this is a good time to check in on the comet of the hour, Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3). Currently glowing around magnitude 5.0 it's already exceeded the more pessimistic brightness forecasts. On January 28th from my home under moderately dark skies (SQM of 21 — Bortle 4) I easily spotted the interloper without optical aid as a 20′-wide, fuzzy glow with a brighter center 5° northwest of Kochab in the Ursa Minor. Despite being magnitude 4.8, it wasn't obvious to the eye unless you knew exactly where to look. Three mornings later I saw it at magnitude 5.0.

There's been intense interest public interest in the comet due to heavy coverage in the news and social media. Everyone wants to see the "green comet." A crowd of people joined me on January 26th for a look through my 10-inch telescope as the temperature hovered around 0° F (–18°C). Although moonlight and light pollution whittled it down to just a coma and bright core, no one left disappointed. Sometimes you don't need a lot of fanfare and rah-rah. The simple "is-ness" of nature is enough. There's also no denying that people like seeing what everyone's been talking about.


Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) displays three tails on January 23, 2023, two days after the Earth crossed the comet's orbital plane. A spikelike antitail protrudes at left; on the right, the narrow ion tail and parabola-shaped dust tail overlap. Recently, a team of astronomers determined the rotation rate of the nucleus at 8.7 hours. Spectra reveal that the comet is rich in diatomic carbon (source of the blue-green glow) and cyanogen.
Dan Bartlett

Peak brightness is expected on February 1st. That's also when Comet ZTF will pass closest to Earth (42 million km) and the last time we'll see it in a moonless sky until February 7th. When that day arrives, the comet should be a 6th-magnitude object zipping across Auriga at the rate of 4° per day. As it recedes from Earth its pace soon slows. Despite a bright Moon in the coming nights, I encourage you to keep watching, as the comet makes scenic passes of Capella on February 5th and Zeta (ζ) Aurigae on February 6th. Given its bright, compact nuclear region I suspect it will remain visible in 50-mm binoculars and small scopes. It's also anchored in the evening sky, making observation more convenient.



https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/understanding-the-tails-of-comet-ztf-c-2022-e3/

[jimboston]

yawn

sos

[jusplay4fun]

again, NOTHING to add

That shows the level of your thoughts, rebuttal, and analysis. NOTHING.

[Dukasaur]

Most of the cosmos is nothingness.

[jimboston]

Most of the cosmos is nothingness.

I know he’s got a big head, but it’s not THAT big.

Pretty empty though, so otherwise very similar to space.

[jusplay4fun]

Again, jimbo contributes NOTHING, excepts insults.

THAT leads me to question his knowledge of Science, that seems close to NOTHING.

This discussion in this Forum is going near NOTHING, too, except for Bananas, saxi, and insults.

Speaking of NOTHING in Space:

Space is not empty. A point in outer space is filled with gas, dust, a wind of charged particles from the stars, light from stars, cosmic rays, radiation left over from the Big Bang, gravity, electric and magnetic fields, and neutrinos from nuclear reactions. As the book "Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space" by Dr. Henning Genz describes, space is also filled with two things we can't directly detect: dark matter and dark energy. Even if all these things could be removed and blocked out from a certain region of space, there would still be three things we could never remove according to Dr. Genz: (1) vacuum energy, (2) the Higgs field, and (3) spacetime curvature.

(...)

Perfectly "empty" space will always have vacuum energy, the Higgs field, and spacetime curvature. More typical vacuums, such as in outer space, also have gas, dust, wind, light, electric fields, magnetic fields, cosmic rays, neutrinos, dark matter, and dark energy. Despite all these things zipping around in outer space, space does seem empty to earth-bound humans who are used to a dense layer of air to swim around in. These concepts are summarized in the list below.

https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2012/12/20/what-keeps-space-empty/#:~:text=Space%20is%20not%20empty.,and%20neutrinos%20from%20nuclear%20reactions.

About this Website
1. What are Dr. Baird's qualifications for providing answers to science questions?
For the past six years, Dr. Baird has been a physics professor at West Texas A&M University. In this capacity, he teaches numerous entry-level and upper-level university courses and carries out research on quantum devices. Dr. Baird recently won academic tenure and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of Physics at West Texas A&M University. Previous to coming to West Texas A&M University, he was an adjunct physics professor for ten years at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and senior research scientist at the Submillimeter-Wave Technology Laboratory. While at UMass Lowell, Dr. Baird taught electromagnetics courses to PhD students and supervised PhD student research in the laboratory.

https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/faqs/

[jusplay4fun]

I do not know why this question is posted in another thread, but I will answer it here (also):

2dimes on Fri Feb 03, 2023 7:59 am

Could a person post actual thoughts in the astronomy thread, in response to a question about observing a green comet, instead of random things copied from other websites? Of course. Or was that your point? By the way did you observe the comet from your yard and were you using a telescope? It's been too cloudy here all week.

It has been too cloudy where I am to view the comet, now I know where to look.

Post actual thoughts? Do you have a question? Do you want me to tell you:
*what I ate for breakfast?
*my views on Cosmology?
*my views on the Anthropic Principle or
*teleological Argument?
What are you looking for, 2dimes?

Look at the opening page of this thread; I posted LOTS of my ideas there without copy and paste. Do you want more of THAT?

also,

Re: Astronomy!
Postby jusplay4fun on Sat Jan 06, 2018 6:04 am

OK, I bundled up (at 5 Degrees F) and I saw the planets Jupiter, Mars, AND the double star of Libra.....very cool and very cold. With sunrise at about 6:25 here, I may go out one more time to see the two planets even closer. Without binoculars, I could not see Mars, really. It is a faint dot, once I realized where it is in the sky. Once I picked it up in binoculars, I saw the faint dot with my naked eyes.

Two tips told to me by good star gazers:

1) stars twinkle and planets do not; this is an easy way to tell stars from planets;

2) your fist, held at arm's length from your body, is 5 degrees; so 10 degrees above the horizon is two fists above it. TRY IT..!

the Sky and Telescope site I cited earlier is a good aid to find the planet conjuncture. There is even mention further down the page about a comet, but its best was 1/4/18 and I likely need a telescope, and getting away from city lights.....I did not read into that topic enough, but that is for 2dimes to check out with his telescope.

VERY COOL to see ALL that this cold morning.

JP4FUN (in the COLD)

I can post more of such things, but why carry on a conversation with myself? Ignoring the recent obvious and intended insults, this thread draws few comments. However, this thread does get LOTS of LOOKS (Views) I have noticed.

Further, I did answer the question(s) posed about comets, without citing any sites. So I do not understand your point, 2dimes. I post information (mostly from a reputable website on the Topic, Sky and Telescope) about what to see and where to look in the sky. Does that bothers you, 2dimes? I even look at other websites for more information, if I find a need for that.

I have noticed that you now post little here. I wonder why. To me, this is a fun place to discuss what we see (and can see) in the night skies.

[jusplay4fun]

I do not see the need for another Astronomy thread. What is the controversy?

I have read lots on the topic of astronomy. For example, I can talk LOTS about the development of the telescope.

I knew about the developments and contributions by Galileo (who took what is basically a field or spy glass and then ground his own lenses to make a refractive telescope) and then Newton (who invented the reflecting telescope). I learned recently the Huygens made contributions to improve telescopes.

I would say that the invention and use of telescopes opened a whole new chapter in the study of astronomy. The launch of the James Webb Telescope is the latest use of this important invention. I have even posted pictures from the JWST. I think Duk did so first in this thread.

[jusplay4fun]

[jimboston]

My astronomyscope for today…

Feb 8, 2023 - Unfortunately, Aries, this may be a period of conflict and tension in your family life, especially where siblings are concerned. Don't you think it's time to deal with these problems once and for all? It would be nice to build a new relationship with them. It might be painful, but it's up to you to take the first step. Call a family meeting and put all your cards on the table.

I guess it’s time to have that conversation with the wife about Mookie?

[Dukasaur]

Did anybody have any luck seeing the green comet?

Here we've had overcast skies the entire time. I had zero chance to spot it.

[jimboston]

Did anybody have any luck seeing the green comet?

Here we've had overcast skies the entire time. I had zero chance to spot it.

Is this comment supposed to bring you good fortune?
Green is a sign of wealth no?

[jusplay4fun]

Did anybody have any luck seeing the green comet?

Here we've had overcast skies the entire time. I had zero chance to spot it.

NO luck here. Too many clouds and I cannot get a clear guidance to look where it SHOULD be. I think around Feb. 10 it will be a near a bright star, if clouds cooperate.

[jusplay4fun]

Scientists find dense ring around dwarf planet, but can't quite explain why
Story by Simrin Singh • Yesterday 11:09 PM

New telescope data has revealed that a dwarf planet in the outer reaches of the solar system has a dense ring around it, leaving scientists and astronomers confused as to why.

Scientists at the European Space Agency announced Wednesday that data and observations of the planet Quaoar which was collected between 2018 and 2021 —from ground-based telescopes, and the space-based telescope Cheops — led them to the discovery.

The ESA disclosed that Quaoar crossed in front of a succession of distant stars, blocking their light as it passed, in an event called an occultation. When the planet blocked that light, scientists were able to see its ring.

Typically, occultations can be difficult to learn from because the alignment of the planet, stars and telescope has to be perfect, the ESA explained.

"When we put everything together, we saw drops in brightness that were not caused by Quaoar, but that pointed to the presence of material in a circular orbit around it," said Bruno Morgado of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in a statement. "The moment we saw that we said, 'Okay, we are seeing a ring around Quaoar.'"

Quaoar is part of a collection of about 3,000 dwarf planets known as trans-Neptunian objects, which are beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-find-dense-ring-around-dwarf-planet-but-can-t-quite-explain-why/ar-AA17guri?ocid=winp0dash&pc=WSPWWU&cvid=08aaff6f253b49e9a703f32a9f9b1333

[jusplay4fun]

THIS WEEK'S SKY AT A GLANCE, FEBRUARY 17 – 26

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22

■ Now the crescent Moon hangs hardly more than 1° to the right of Jupiter over Venus, as shown above. Think photo opportunity! Get some nice scenery silhouetted in the foreground, zoom in, and prop your phone or camera on something solid so it can take time exposures.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23

■ Sirius blazes high in the south on the meridian by about 8 or 9 p.m. now. Using binoculars or a scope at low power, examine the spot 4° south of Sirius (directly below it when on the meridian). Four degrees is somewhat less than the width of a typical binocular's or finderscope's field of view.

Can you see a little patch of speckly gray haze? That's the open star cluster M41, about 2,200 light-years away. Its total magnitude adds up to 5.0.

Sirius, by comparison, is only 8.6 light-years away — and shines some 400 times brighter.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24

■ After dinnertime at this time of year, five carnivore constellations are rising upright in a row from the northeast to south, as if out of hibernation. They're all seen in profile with their noses pointed up and their feet (if any) to the right. These are Ursa Major the Big Bear in the northeast (with the Big Dipper as its brightest part), Leo the Lion in the east, dim Hydra the Sea Serpent in the southeast, Canis Minor the Little Dog higher in the south-southeast, and bright Canis Major the Big Dog in the south.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-february-17-26/

[jusplay4fun]

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26

■ First-quarter Moon (exactly first quarter at 3:06 a.m. tonight EST). This evening the Moon shines between Aldebaran and the Pleiades, as shown below. Mars is off to the Moon's left.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-february-17-26/

THIS WEEK'S PLANET ROUNDUP
Mercury is hidden deep in the sunrise.

Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets, shine boldly in the west-southwest at dusk. Venus is the lower and brighter one; they're magnitudes –3.9 and –2.1, respectively.

They're drawing closer together every day. On Friday the 17th they're 12° apart and closing fast; a week later on the 24th they're only 5° apart. They're on their way to a close conjunction on March 1st, when they'll pass just half a degree apart.

Telescopically Venus is a shimmering little gibbous ball, 12 arcseconds in diameter and 87% sunlit. Jupiter is 34 arcseconds wide. That's small for Jupiter; it's nearly on the other side of the solar system from us. Jupiter displays a strikingly dimmer surface brightness in a telescope. That's because it's nearly 7 times farther from the illuminating Sun than Venus is.

Use binoculars to check in on the pinpoint moons of Jupiter, very close to its globe.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-february-17-26/

[HitRed]

Always thought ship and aircraft navigation was cool.

Such a dome would allow a trained navigator to perform astronavigation and thereby guide the aircraft at night without the aid of land-based visual references.