Society for Popular Astronomy

Hi Cliff!

I suppose we must wait now for the 22nd Century before we can have the next ("22"-based) time line

best regards,

This clever factoid was posted on SGL, couldn't resist repeating it here (currently the Moon is the only thing visible in the sky, and that through a thick and variable cloud soup :roll: ) "At 21 seconds past 9.21pm tonight it will be : the 21st second of the 21st minute, of the 21st hour, of t...

Hello Pies, and Welcome. I wonder if you are seeing an effect of Atmospheric Refraction at or close to Sunrise? This is the effect of Earths atmosphere bending light like a lens to cause us to see the Sun as risen while in fact it is still below the horizon. In that case the Moon's illumination will...

Well done Jeff :) Just to say it was not just amateurs who used binoculars as a source of finderscopes and eyepieces back in those far-off days before telescopes became widely-available consumer items. Some of the smaller UK telescope makers used russian and ex-WD optics as a source of components. H...

Yes, in the 70's it was common practice to take a cheap(ish) pair of 6x30 (?) Russian binoculars , saw them in half and after a bit of tidying up use the side with diopter focus adjustment "as is" as a finderscope for UK-made astroscopes. Some even had crosshairs added (human hair sometime...

"Lunatic Fringe"

Didn't Majestic 12 assasinate President Kennedy for threatening to release this sort of information?

Dear Brian,
Thank You so much for cheering me up!

A very nice image indeed!

regards,

Agreed! Come the next Carrington-scale event (and come it will) the Maesters will need to stock their new libraries

Hello Kay. In my opinion that HP laptop should perform well enough in imaging. Depending on how much imaging you do, you might find that more storage is useful - maybe a 1TB USB hard drive. I guess most people doing imaging and processing on the same computer would go for a quad-core processor, but ...

You know, as a boy I grew up with balsa-wood model aircraft kits (Kiel-Kraft I seem to remember). It makes me smile to imagine that in future we might see balsa-wood satellites in orbit . I imagine one basic problem with hardwood for satellites is the weight factor on launch?

Oh, right! It's so long since I joined the Forum that I've forgotten how that works

regards,

Hi Steve and Welcome.
Not quite sure I follow your comment about cars and venus. Can you explain for others?

regards,

SkyBrowser wrote: ↑Mon Dec 21, 2020 7:38 pm Ha, I think I have a way around it ... n aked-eye!

Well, do tell?

As I forecast on Dec 10th, tonight brings rain, drizzle and cloud a mile deep

I did get one or two snapshots over previous days but nothing as good as others have posted here so I'll leave it