Astronomy, The Sky and Outer Space

Evening all. Have they arrived?

Look out for the Lyrid meteor shower tomorrow night.

....and the SpaceX satellites tonight and onwards.

A half moon in April.

Evening all It is a new moon, after all! I avoid writing off folk history 'as old wives tales', after all our website here is folk history, but there are many historical claims made about our moon, which often contradict current "science". The fact that its trajectory states that is is moving away constantly from the Earth at a calculated rate each year, so there must have been a time when it was... where? Time spans are so fraught with contradiction in so many areas, for example, the grand old age of the Earth, as great as that is, according to some geologists is far too short a period, even for the earths carbon fossil fuels to have formed, which is one of the reasons why Dr Velikovsky started his research leading up to his books Worlds in collision & Ages in chaos. As controversial as they are, they cannot be laughed off, as so many aspects of them keep rearing their heads from time to time, like the age of the moon, that he describes as later than that of the Earth.

Comet Neowise is just visible to naked eye. It is currently beneath the plough. The photo (15 sec exposure) is better than what I actually saw with my eye. The camera could also just make out the rings of Saturn Not bad for a mid market "point and click". Peter.

A clear image of the moon. The original has some interesting features.

Another image of the Moon but when I zoomed in there was Mars. Mars is to the right, best viewed on a tablet or phone so you can enlarge, it's only a dot.

Hi all, If you need confirmation that autumn has arrived, if you're up before sunrise, the constellation Orion is the herald of winter. It's in the east before dawn.

For about half an hour before dawn during moonless periods in September and October annually, the steep morning ecliptic favours the appearance of the zodiacal light in the eastern sky. This is sunlight scattered by interplanetary particles concentrated in the plane of the solar system. During a two-week period that starts just before the September new moon, look above the eastern horizon for a broad wedge of faint light rising from the horizon and centered on the ecliptic (marked by a green line), which extends below Venus toward the bright star Regulus in Leo. Don't confuse the zodiacal light with the Milky Way, which is positioned further to the southeast. Pre dawn Wednesday this week.

Headed for the Moon?

Now going into hiding

Hi all, I like the expression of opinions, I express mine from time to time, but in doing so, please remember others might not share your or my opinion. That's a huge value of our Historic Coventry Forum. One of our moderators needed to ask recently for posted conversations to be cooled. Behaving sensibly means that even difficult subjects can be shared, as long as we are not causing insult to anyone else, whether they are posting on the forum or just reading. I mention this on this topic, as few topics have such controversial issues, fraught with opinions as different as chalk & cheese. I cannot leave food out, hey MR!

I could be about to share my opinions on recent news reports about bacteria in the atmosphere of Venus, but breathe a sigh of relief. That might be for another day. What's intriguing me is the recent revelations regards black holes. I don't mean our old coal house. When the tangible evidence of black holes was first mooted in scientific publications, they were described as existing at the outer limits of the universe. We are now told that they, many of them, are actually in our own galaxy. That when two are close together, that they produce a joining flux, that was described in one paper, resembling a tornado. In that flux-tube, which is moving around like the tail of a scorpion, anything that is close by, many of the known stable characteristics like time, state of matter & so on are not stable. Many of the controversial ideas of Dr Velikovsky look very interesting. I just wonder.

I'm not sure that I've ever seen the Milky Way. I've always lived in areas with high light pollution and when I was elsewhere, I forgot to look. Philip, I don't think that possible bacteria on Venus has much scope for heated comments. It's certainly easier to understand than black holes.