Category: solar system
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The Eagle has landed. Apollo 11 Landing from PDI to Touchdown
Just seen this and wanted to share it. A blow-by-blow account that follows Eagle descent to the lunar surface. You know they make it … but its still edge of the seat stuff! The Eagle has landed! ___________________________________________________________________ PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it,…
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Summer evening talk – “The Stars and the Planets … Stargazing for All” – 16 August 2023 @ 7:30 pm
Portswood Library, ‘Under the Dome’, Portswood Road, Southampton, United Kingdom, SO17 2NG PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos. In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as…
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“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_Kennedy_-We_Choose_to_Go_to_the_Moon(29533458786).jpg Speaking of perserverance as I was (see here) the US effort on behalf of mankind in the 60s and 70s shows exactly what humanity is capable of. The video of President Kennedy’s still excites and sets the hair on the back of the neck: Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th5A6ZQ28pE PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message…
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Are comets and shooting stars the same?
Caption: Perseid Meteor from UK 12-13 Aug 2021 (credit in ALT) I was asked this question during a recent talk on stargazing. Easy question to answer, was my first thought. I started with confirming that they were indeed different phenomena and went on to discuss where comets came from, their usual long orbits (unless they…
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“I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”
– Stephen Hawking (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018) An extract from an interview by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001) where Hawking says, “Colonies in space may be our only hope.” There are certainly a lot of accidents that could befall humanity – and not just the ones we think we…
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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images
For a change of pace, here are several of, the now famous images, taken by the JWST, since its launch on 25 December 2021 at 12:20 pm GMT. JWST took off from the Guiana Space Centre, also called Europe’s Spaceport, a European spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana, a region of France in…
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If stargazing is for everyone, how do I start?
… at the beginning. Stargazing is a gateway to astronomy and astronomy is one of the few sciences that remains open to the amateur or citizen scientist – where real science can be conducted. For example, BOSS (more accurately, Backyard Observatory Supernova Search) are an amateur collaboration of 6 friends from Australia and New Zealand…
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Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
Discussing originality and plagiarism, Matthew Syed uses the release of two very similar movies in 1998, Armageddon and Deep Impact, as an example of how our brains are wired for unoriginality. He finds, in his Radio 4 series Sideways (available as a podcast), that we evolve as a collective brain, absorbing our shared cultural cues and looking…
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“Above me shone the stars, for the night was very clear.”
Wells, H.G.. The Time Machine: with Illustrations (Classic Collection Book 22) (p. 63). Kindle Edition. The great H.G. Wells, in The Time Machine, goes on to state: “I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling. All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which is imperceptible in…
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“I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re sceptical.”
― Arthur C. Clarke (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) Science fiction author, futurist, sceptic, science proponent and all-round quotable guy – but did he say this? QI isn’t sure! Whether he said it or not, is not the issue. It’s whether astrology is true or not – and how people react, behave and treat…
Stargazing Guy 