Monthly Archives: September 2008

Sep
30
2008

Jules Verne re-entry video

I guess most of you will have seen this by now but I’ve put the link here so I can find it again.
Until the next post… Clear Skies!
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By Steve Dangerfield | Posted in General | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
Sep
28
2008

More relative sizes

A few posts ago I drew your attention to a web page that showed the relative sizes of some astronomical objects (here) and I’ve just seen another post from Astropixie covering the same topic.  I just feel so humbled; space is so vast…
Until the next post… Clear Skies!
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By Steve Dangerfield | Posted in General | Comments (0)
Sep
19
2008

Attended my first meeting at Mexborough & Swinton Astronomical Society

I’ve been meaning to attend one of the MSAS meetings for a while and finally got round to it.  They seem a good down to earth set of people and found them very welcoming.  They’d arranged a speaker Thijs Kouwenhoven who gave a talk on Star Formation which was very interesting and well delivered.  I’ll probably post [...]

By Steve Dangerfield | Posted in General | Tagged | Comments (1)
Sep
10
2008

Back into GCSE Astronomy

I left school about 20 years ago but I’m back doing my GCSE’s again.  I was in the first year to do the new GCSE; I remember lots of people saying it would not last, but looks like it has…
Anyway, about a year ago I decided to do a simple course in Astronomy to get [...]

By Steve Dangerfield | Posted in Study | Tagged , | Comments (0)
Sep
09
2008

A Light Year, just stop and think about how much that is!

I realise I’ve recently taken for granted how long a Light Year is; flippantly using it as a unit of measure.  I just happened to be reading about the Ring Nebula sitting 4,000 Light Years away from Earth.  The first thing that crossed my mind was the 4,000 part, which on it’s own sounds big, but when you consider [...]

By Steve Dangerfield | Posted in General | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
Sep
08
2008

You’d have to be really big to Stumble over these night sky objects!

I’ve not used stumble in a while but a couple of days ago I hit the Stumble! button in my browser and came across this.
This is a great way to give a sense of perspective to people very new to astronomy.
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By Steve Dangerfield | Posted in General | Comments (0)
Sep
06
2008

What does the P mean in a comet’s name?

Came across a P/ prefix in a comet’s name and didn’t know what it was so I did a google search and found the following Wikipedia page; essentially a prefix is added to indicate the nature of the comet:
P/ = Periodic comet i.e. it’s orbit passes earth periodically
C/ = Non-periodic comet
X/ = No reliable orbit could be calculated
Am I missing something in [...]

By Steve Dangerfield | Posted in What | Tagged , | Comments (0)