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Username: Champagnerocker
Joined: September 2011
Visits: 382
Last Active: November 2012
Roles: Member

Champagnerocker

Voyager documentary
I was unable to recognise the music. However, i did notice that there were enormous chunks of the documentary that were recycled from the excellent 1999 "The Planets" documentary series. Even the same pencil sharpening footage is used! ;…

Comment by Champagnerocker October 2012 permalink
meteor,over gwent
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9503248/Exploding-meteor-creates-sonic-boom-over-Wales.html

Comment by Champagnerocker September 2012 permalink
Roll on Winter
Seeing Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka for the first time in autumn never fails to thrill me.

Comment by Champagnerocker August 2012 permalink
So Curiosity touched down safely then.
JPL have now released a stop motion film of the descent from a camera on the bottom of curiosity. From heat shield seperation to touchdown.

Comment by Champagnerocker August 2012 permalink
So Curiosity touched down safely then.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter even managed to get a snap of the descent! http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/06/mars-orbiter-catches-pic-of-curiosity-on-its-way-down/ Wow.

Comment by Champagnerocker August 2012 permalink
mars science laboratory
There was an hour long press conference at JPL yesterday discussing the entry descent and landing of MSL that can be seen here

Comment by Champagnerocker August 2012 permalink
mars science laboratory
An hour long programme on Curiosity on BBC2 this week. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01llnb2/Horizon_20122013_Mission_to_Mars/

Comment by Champagnerocker August 2012 permalink
M13 Hercules Cluster
I can just about see M13 from my back garden in London. I was able to make some observations last night; it was certainly a challenge to find and it was a rather disappointing grey smudge in my eyepiece. With averted vision i was able to resolve ind…

Comment by Champagnerocker May 2012 permalink
Saturn viewing
Light pollution shouldn't hamper your views of big solar system objects much. I'm in SE10 and i get good views of Saturn.

Comment by Champagnerocker May 2012 permalink
JUICE (JUpiter ICy moon Explorer)
There still isn't much in the solar system that we have had soft landings on. Just Mars, Venus, the moon and Titan I think? It totally blows my mind when i have been looking at Saturn through my scope in the past month that we have successfull…

Comment by Champagnerocker April 2012 permalink
Venus transit 2012
It will be happening in the UK at dawn. I think that when the sun rises Venus will already be over the sun's disc? Here is a table of times for various locations http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/transit/venus/city12-1.html Having seen the entire …

Comment by Champagnerocker April 2012 permalink
Stellarium
You have got the time set to just before dawn?

Comment by Champagnerocker February 2012 permalink
Hind's Crimson Star
That looks like an interesting target. However, I can appreciate that when something is that tricky to locate in even in the virtual world of stellarium them it must be a challenge to find in the real night sky. It does look like it lines up perfec…

Comment by Champagnerocker February 2012 permalink
Are my Binoculars OK for starting out?
I bought a "Hama Star 63 Tripod" off amazon for ~£15 that i use with my 20x70 binoculars which does the job well - unless it is blowing a gale (in which case i probably won't be outside).

Comment by Champagnerocker February 2012 permalink
Wish the clouds would vanish!
I'm sure that once i go back to work on Monday (after having this week off) the skies will clear up or the rest of you.

Comment by Champagnerocker February 2012 permalink
Are my Binoculars OK for starting out?
10x50s are fine. The views you get with the larger binoculars won't be that much better and you would need to use a tripod with them.

Comment by Champagnerocker February 2012 permalink
Orion Nebula
You cannot see colour when the levels of light are low. The colour sensitive photoreceptor cells at the back of the human eye cannot detect small numbers of photons. This is the reason that all cats appear grey in the dark. If you want to see colou…

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
northern lights
I liked the apocryphal story that the northern lights were called the "herring flash" by certain old Scandanavian tribes, because they believed they resembled reflections of large shoals of fish.

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
should the view be like this?
You should easily be able to get nice crisp images at well over 150x magnification using an eight inch reflector. I've got a similar set up and use a 5mm eyepiece no problem and if conditions are good a 10mm eyepiece in concert with a 3x barlow.

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
hi everyone
Sorry to hear that, hope its not too serious and that you are getting better.

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
Im sure it was Mars
Mars is generally considered disappointing for most observers because it is so small. However, if you do have a big enough scope it will be very interesting. One of the curious things about Mars is because its orbits are so eliptical the distance b…

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
stargazing LIVE
That is extremely unlikely to happen. I don't know what the exact statistics are but there was a massive spike in the numbers of injuries and deaths on the roads in the autumn of 1939 when a blackout was introduced at the start of the war.

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
Im sure it was Mars
The radius of Jupiter as a disc is ~21 times greater than Mars, so even though Mars is around 6 times closer to us at the moment [0.85AU copmared to 4.9AU] it is always going to look tiny in comparison.

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
stargazing LIVE
Well the sky at night is on at the start of each month.

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
newbie question!
Probably Betelgeuse, which is one of the "shoulders" of the constellation Orion.

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
a very large yellow/orange star tonight
Almost definately Venus.

Comment by Champagnerocker January 2012 permalink
advice please
One problem with astronomy in the 21st century is that people are so used to being spoiled by stunning images from Voyager, Cassini, Hubble etc that I think everyone who buys a telescope will be left thinking "er is that it" when they firs…

Comment by Champagnerocker November 2011 permalink
Outside in the cold
If you keep your scope inside your house and take it out at night then the air in the optical tube will be much warmer than the night air and it is best to leave it for half an hour or so at least to allow the temperatures to equalise so you are not…

Comment by Champagnerocker November 2011 permalink
The "Great lakes" of Europa
I'm a bit confused by this as a news story [i saw this reported elsewhere this week too] I thought we already knew that Europa was made up of ice floating on liquid water or did we just think that? Plus the Gallileo probe finished years ago, h…

Comment by Champagnerocker November 2011 permalink
My first telescope?
That sounds more or less right. The diameter of the primary mirror [also refered to as the aperture size] is the key factor in what makes a better light gathering tube.

Comment by Champagnerocker November 2011 permalink

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