About Space Exploration

A synodic month (full moon to full moon) in days of 86400 SI unit seconds is...

29.530588853 + 0.000000002162 × (current year - 2000)

Though I doubt the builders of Stonehenge would have specified quite as many decimal places as Wikipedia!

And speaking of Stonehenge, it is of course the summer solstice tomorrow [looks at clock], erm, today - about 11am BST round these parts. And we have Mars, Saturn and Jupiter all visible for a night or two (might go for a midnight ramble tomorrow, my southern horizon is about 250ft higher than here!)

Happy midsummer's day, everybody!

...Excuse me, but What happened to this Thread?

California did not reply, either... might that have been because replies were about Astronomy, rather than "Space Exploration"...?

California said:

Anyone interested in a journey through the Universe?

...We all are (here), but little probes with little power and little distance are not very interesting. I say get rid of "Jet Propulsion" and focus upon AntiGravity, is what I say... But it is too expensive and so that is why it is currently so limited. (..It Gets rid of Oxides and just uses pure Elements like Gold and Lithium.)

...Any more discussion? I would like to know the precise number used (in software) for calculating the phases of the Moon, for example. I cannot build a StoneHenge for myself and so I do not know...!      ;-)

Being able to identify stars and constellations was probably my best hope of impressing girls. Now there's an app for it. Bah.

Just been reading Scientific American on dark matter axions. Doesn't seem real somehow. One good thing about the NASA sites is the images are all free of copyright.

I have always loved star-gazing, and I can remember exactly when my interest in space exploration and science began - with the stunning (for their time) images of Jupiter from the Voyager probes. I can still picture now the issue of National Geographic with a little flick-book animation on the page corners that let you see the bands of clouds and the red spot swirling around - that issue got very dog-eared!

I don't follow it as obsessively as I used to, but I keep my eye on New Scientist etc. and have a nice little internet session on the NASA websites now and then.  Living on the edge of the Dales, I can get out to somewhere with good seeing a few times a year, though the light pollution is usually to bad to see much from where I live (no chance of the Milky Way - boo!) The visual snow that my brain perceives the whole time doesn't help much either!

I'm not great at spotting the constellations (like DC, Cassiopea is one of my main "landmarks".)  However, I have a nice little freeware application called Stellarium on my laptop, so I can take a real-time start chart out with me which can tell me what all of the objects are and when to expect meteor showers and good views of the planets etc.  I'd love to have a telescope and to do some astro-photography, but I can't really justify the expense given how few nights of good viewing I get.

My goodness... and Greetings California...!

Compared to the last few weeks, there have been a lot of new Posts just within the past 24 Hours? 

I live in London... and so LIGHT POLLUTION drowns out a lot of the Stars. But...

California said:

Anyone interested in Astronomy here?

I sure am! This topic was one of those I had listed as starting, albeit a little way down. (You have read my Posts and so should know what I mean.)

I always know where Ursa Minor/The Big Dipper is... yet with me, there is always something, hmmm? In the Winter, I love to see ORION. But in the summer, I have trouble seeing such things as Pegasus or "The Summer Triangle". Without Cassiopia (a W shape), then I kind of have no idea what is going on...!

...However if you are wanting to discuss "space exploration" or using Videos, then I would not know so much about that (although I DO know a little about "Rocket Science".) I myself look up at the Stars and the Moon, and am one of those seemingly rare persons who knows that the SUN and the MOON can appear right next to each other during some days. But I am also limited by my situation which prevents me from being an "expert" at such matters. 

Perhaps not a helpful post from myself, yet a post nonetheless. To discuss the visible stars, I shall try to post anyway. Thank You for a Thread about this topic.

EDIT: Cassiopia and The Summer Triangle (!). I have not studied Astronomy in ages... But I still look up at the Stars. It kind of gives me reassurance...

I used to be. I grew up in the countryside where you could actually see fourth- and fifth- magnitude stars and Andromeda if lucky.  Seeing the Galilean satellites through a small telescope is great.

Since then Galileo and Cassini probes have given really high-quality closeups of the same tiny dots, but I've lost interest rather. I don't even watch Sky at Night on the BBC any more.