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Astronomical News

With any luck Phil Plait will come up with the goods on this in a day or two, until then here's a summary from Imperial College London.

"A galaxy a third the size of our own, but extremely faint, has been observed orbiting around the Milky Way.

An international team, including an astronomer from Imperial College London, discovered the massive galaxy when trawling through data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. Despite its size, the galaxy has very few stars, challenging conventional theories of galaxy formation."

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/189023/enormous-ghost-galaxy-spotted-hiding-next/

Seems to have been missed through a combination of very low density/brightness and also as (i think) it's in the zone of avoidance in line with the disc of our own galaxy.
 
Not the greatest of news, but a rather good aurora borealis tonight (07/10/2018)! Excuse the not-brilliant pics, I couldn't find the camera remote and get the right manual focus.

May I ask, whereabouts are you?
 
Some new articles I thought might be of interest. They're all on sciencedaily.com -

2018123_19355166.jpg
 
If you're referring to CN's post ... There aren't any links - he posted an unlinked image.
Rather than posting four direct links, no need to take up that bandwidth!

(Did I just say, 'bandwidth'! - have to remember I grew up with the early days of modems, where bandwidth was precious!).
 
Rather than posting four direct links, no need to take up that bandwidth!

(Did I just say, 'bandwidth'! - have to remember I grew up with the early days of modems, where bandwidth was precious!).
If it's a link to video i.e.: you tube then it takes a moment to load. However if it's just URL's to say an article they take up no to little time to load, hence virtually no extra bandwidth needed. Hope that helps.
 
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If it's a link to video i.e.: you tube then it takes a moment to load. However if it's just URL's to say an article they take up no to little time to load, hence virtually no extra bandwidth needed. Hope that helps.
Yes, cheers for that!
 
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Totally worth the pain of perusal, quite a long history of black holes, also some very recent findings.

The newest idea seems to be that the event horizon is not a surface or the equivalent of a surface as we'd think of it so nothing interacts with it.

 
'Mon the wee Voyager 2!!!

I still don't understand if the universe has continually expanded, what it expanded into, given nothing existed to expand into...

I often ponder things like that. It's one of those questions that, as my mother used to say when I was little, "You'll go mad thinking about".

Similarly, what's outside the universe? (Nowadays I tend to think more universes)* but who knows?


*I know, technically that would be a multiverse rather than a universe... :atom:
 
Nasa's New Horizons probe on course for historic flyby
By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
  • 18 December 2018
  • 49comments

_104866253_nh-atmu69_binary_sm_1.jpg
Image copyrightNASAImage captionArtwork: At this stage, scientists can only speculate what Ultima Thule looks like
The American space agency's New Horizons probe remains on course for its daring flyby of Ultima Thule.
When the mission sweeps past the 30km wide object on New Year's Day, it will be making the most distant ever visit to a Solar System body - at some 6.5 billion km from Earth.
Mission planners decided at the weekend to forego a possible trajectory change.
It means the probe will get to fly 3,500km from icy Ultima's surface to take a series of photos and other data.
There had been some concern that the object might be surrounded by large debris particles which could destroy the probe if it were to run into them. But nothing of the sort has been detected and so a wider, safer pass will not be needed.

etc

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46610812
 
Getting closer
Nasa's New Horizons: Excitement ahead of Ultima Thule flyby
  • 8 hours ago

p06wpls0.jpg



Media captionAlan Stern: "It's pure science and pure exploration"
History will be made on Tuesday when Nasa's New Horizons probe sweeps past the icy world known as Ultima Thule.
Occurring some 6.5 billion km (4 billion miles) from Earth, the flyby will set a new record for the most distant ever exploration of a Solar System object by a spacecraft.
New Horizons will gather a swathe of images and other data over the course of just a few hours leading up to and beyond the closest approach.
This is timed for 05:33 GMT.
etc

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46699737
 
Phil Plait on point as ever... he's on holiday witn rubbish internet though so we won't be getting any nice pics of the object from him this week,

Sounds weird though. :D

There's been some interesting news that the brightness of MU69 over time (what astronomers call the light curve) is pretty flat, which is weird. If it were elongated (or two objects orbiting each other) then you'd expect it to get brighter and dimmer over time as it rotates. If the surface is patchy you'd expect the brightness to change to as it rotates as well. Yet nothing like that has been seen. Is it featureless? Or do we happen to see it looking straight down on one of its poles, so that as it spins we don't see new features roll into view? That last bit seems unlikely, since we've seen it has two big components, and it's hard to see how we'd be able to separate them yet be looking down the pole. So that's odd.
 
If you don't watch it all at least go in for the space top one of the commentators wears at 18 and 28 minutes.

Notable for at least 3 different attempts at pronouncing the name of the object and a strangely Christmas Top of the Pops vibe.

 
New Horizons has survived its encounter with Ultima Thule (sounds like a villain in a Marvel movie)
New Horizons: Nasa probe survives flyby of Ultima Thule
By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
  • 1

_105023927_alice.jpg
Image copyrightNASAImage captionAlice Bowman is congratulated on the confirmation of flyby success
The US space agency's New Horizons probe has made contact with Earth to confirm its successful flyby of the icy world known as Ultima Thule.
The encounter occurred some 6.5bn km (4bn miles) away, making it the most distant ever exploration of an object in our Solar System.
New Horizons acquired gigabytes of photos and other observations during the pass.
It will now send these home over the coming months.
The radio message from the robotic craft was picked up by one of Nasa's big antennas, in Madrid, Spain.
It had taken fully six hours and eight minutes to traverse the great expanse of space between Ultima and Earth.

etc

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46729898
 
Brian May is involved with the flyby, he's on the team.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/01/world/new-horizons-ultima-thule-flyby-success/index.html

Brian May, the guitarist for the legendary rock band Queen and an astrophysicist, is also a participating scientist in the New Horizons mission. He's particularly interested in stereo imaging for this leg of the mission. He was also inspired to release a new song celebrating New Horizons on New Year's Day.
 
If you don't watch it all at least go in for the space top one of the commentators wears at 18 and 28 minutes.

Notable for at least 3 different attempts at pronouncing the name of the object and a strangely Christmas Top of the Pops vibe.


She also seems to have borrowed Brian May's hair for the segment.
 
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