Astronomical News

[eburacum]

Just seen this on Gogglebox.
The BBC invited an astronomer on to discuss the recent near-miss with an asteroid. They called her an 'astrologer'. Perhaps she does horoscopes and tea-leaves too.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Just shows the dire state of journalism.

 

[Yithian]

Just shows the dire state of journalism.

She was handing out hints with her attire, too.

 

[Trevp666]

And some of the items on the bookshelf were a bit of a giveaway too.
"Catching Stardust"
A model of a rocket (not sure which - possibly an Atlas-V)
"Limitless" by astronaut Tim Peake
(possibly - blurry) "The End of Everything" by Katie Mack
And what appears to be cat in a spacesuit.

I can't read the titles of the other books but I suspect they are all space-travel related.

 

[pandacracker]

Don't you go all "Miss Marple" on us Trev!

That's @catseye's job.

 

[catseye]

Don't you go all "Miss Marple" on us Trev!

That's @catseye's job.

It's all right, Trev can't do the twinset.

 

[Tunn11]

God, you know you're getting old when astronomers start looking young.

 

[charliebrown]

in a few days the Lyrids Meteor showers are supposed to strong this year.

This is a good time for UFOs to travel about unnoticed blending into the sky show.

 

[Sid]

Just came across this online. There's an 'Hybrid' Eclipse today and tomorrow, UK time (20th April, '23)
https://www.space.com/hybrid-solar-eclipse-guide

 

[Tunn11]

Re think on shape of our galaxy.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/astronomers-rethink-the-milky-ways-shape

 

[charliebrown]

This is really not my field, but a rare reverse sun spot breaking the Hale’s Law of sun spot polarity will explode in the next couple of days.

Because of this, the Northern Lights will cover more of planet earth from this X Class sun material ejection.

Let us know if you see the Northern Lights !

 

[charliebrown]

The Met Office says around 3 A M tonight the Northern Lights can be seen in Scotland, North Ireland, North England, and a lesser chance in North Wales, and the Midlands.

This is all because something call Hale’s Law has been broken ( a very rare occurrence ) and the Sun is confused about the normal polarity of sun spots.

 

[Trevp666]

It seems really rather frequently these days that we get told (probably once every few weeks) that 'the northern lights can be seen as far south as (insert name of southern town here)'.
And each time I fall for it, and I go outside for my last smoke of the night at around midnight and intently stare into the northern sky for a good 10 minutes, see jack, and then the next day there are pictures on the BBC news website of green skies in (eg) Portsmouth.
I reckon they make it all up.

 

[Tunn11]

It seems really rather frequently these days that we get told (probably once every few weeks) that 'the northern lights can be seen as far south as (insert name of southern town here)'.
And each time I fall for it, and I go outside for my last smoke of the night at around midnight and intently stare into the northern sky for a good 10 minutes, see jack, and then the next day there are pictures on the BBC news website of green skies in (eg) Portsmouth.
I reckon they make it all up.

Same here, I even make sure I can see the sky properly from under the umbrella.

 

[Erinaceus]

The spectacular pictures are mostly time exposures, the real thing being underwhelming as seen from (insert name of southern town here).

https://petapixel.com/2016/01/22/the-truth-and-lies-of-those-aurora-photos-you-see/

 

[Sollywos]

The spectacular pictures are mostly time exposures, the real thing being underwhelming as seen from (insert name of southern town here).

https://petapixel.com/2016/01/22/the-truth-and-lies-of-those-aurora-photos-you-see/

Ah ha! Thanks for that post Erinaceus. There were some spectacular looking pictures taken from my local area the other week which had puzzled me as I had taken a walk up to a good viewing point and seen bugger all. Assumed I'd not stayed long enough and had missed them! I feel better about it now I know that I would have been unlikely to have seen them anyway.

However I did see them from near here in the early 60's, a very obvious red glow. No one had told us to expect them, Mum called us out to see them as she thought that's what they were and the next day it was confirmed. I was also lucky enough to see the green version when I went to Iceland in 2008. I'd still like to see some super duper ones. An online friend who grew up in Canada said he saw them frequently as a child but was scared of them!

 

[Tigerhawk]

in a few days the Lyrids Meteor showers are supposed to strong this year.

This is a good time for UFOs to travel about unnoticed blending into the sky show.

Like this one?

 

[Bigphoot2]

Astronomers detect largest cosmic explosion ever seen​

• • Published
    34 minutes ago

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The actual explosion captured by a Nasa space telescope
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent

Astronomers have discovered what they believe to be the largest explosion ever detected.
The explosion is more than 10 times brighter than any recorded exploding star - known as a supernova.
So far it has lasted more than three years, much longer than most supernovae which are usually only visibly bright for a few months.
One theory is that the blast was caused when a vast cloud of gas was swallowed up by a black hole.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65571309

 

[charliebrown]

Actually I can not really understand the enormity of the situation.

According to one article I read, if you push all the billions of stars in the Milly Way together, this would still not equal to this supernovae’s extreme brightness that has been going on for three years.

Wow !

 

[Bigphoot2]

An update on Betelgeuse's behaviour

‘It’s new territory’: why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?
After the ‘great dimming’, the closest red giant star to Earth is pulsating twice as fast as usual and lighting up the southern hemisphere’s early evening sky

@helenrsullivan
Fri 26 May 2023 04.52 BST
555
One of the brightest stars in the sky is behaving strangely, pulsating from bright to dim twice as fast as usual and giving scientists an unprecedented insight into how stars die.

Betelgeuse, the closest red giant to Earth, has long been understood to move between brighter and dimmer in 400-day cycles. But from late 2019 to early 2020, it underwent what astrophysicists called “the great dimming”, as a dust cloud obscured our view of the star.

Now, it is glowing at 150% of its normal brightness, and is cycling between brighter and dimmer at 200-day intervals – twice as fast as usual – according to astrophysicist Andrea Dupree of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. It is currently the seventh brightest star in the night sky – up three places from its usual tenth brightest.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...glowing-so-brightly-and-behaving-so-strangely

 

[Tunn11]

An update on Betelgeuse's behaviour

https://www.theguardian.com/science...glowing-so-brightly-and-behaving-so-strangely

Betelgeuse is Alpha Orionis which ought to mean the brightest star in Orion, Western astronomy AFAIK has never regarded it as being brighter than Rigel. Quite a few constellations have the magnitude out of sequence with the greek letter order. I remember there was speculation about whether the old astronomers got it wrong or whether certain stars have brghtened or dimmed over very long periods or a bit of both.

Variable stars have been known about for quite a long time as some are quite regular and quite noticable Algol the "demon star" in Perseus for instance since 1667. However with darker skies, no telescopes, etc. you would have thought someone in the West would have cottoned on a bit sooner.

 

[eburacum]

I suspect the Arabic astronomers had noticed Algol's peculiar behaviour, since they called it 'The Demon'.

Betelgeuse is a very big, low-density star, and composed of several different layers which sometimes shine through the outermost, thinnest chromosphere. It gives off a lot of dust, too, which is supposed to obscure its true bright sometimes.