Author Archives: Steve Dangerfield

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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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.
Tweet This

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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 [...]

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