I have always thought of the universe as a giant's fart - a big bang, then expansion as the gas rushes and then diffuses away. I suppose some bright spark could disprove (without igniting!) my idea?

ESA's LISA Pathfinder is another part of the search for gravitational waves, and this has now passed a milestone, which is just an amazing feat of technology. :28yv7qvs [ (c) [size=85:28yv7qvsCopyright ESA/ATG medialab[/size Basically, the plan was, to have two detectors, in perfect and permanent freefall through space, so effectively completely "weightless", taking the measurements. T How they did it (very briefly) was 1. Position the satellite at a point approx 1.5m km towards the Sun, where the gravity from Earth and Sun balance out (orbiting the first Sun–Earth ‘Lagrangian point’, L1.) 2. Release the two detectors so that they float freely within their respective containers 3. Using an incredibly sensitive steering mechanism, "fly" the spacecraft around the detectors! - no force will ever be applied to the free-floating detectors again, save the gravity that keeps them in orbit, and the spacecraft will when necessary make minute adjustments to its position, to keep the freefalling detectors in the centre of their housings. So, the theory goes, the only thing that can cause a disturbance of the detectors would be a passing gravitational wave. A fuller explanation of this amazing experimental mission here: m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_S ... Pathfinder

ESA's LISA Pathfinder is another part of the search for gravitational waves, and this has now passed a milestone, which is just an amazing feat of technology. :28yv7qvs [ (c) [size=85:28yv7qvsCopyright ESA/ATG medialab[/size Basically, the plan was, to have two detectors, in perfect and permanent freefall through space, so effectively completely "weightless", taking the measurements. T How they did it (very briefly) was 1. Position the satellite at a point approx 1.5m km towards the Sun, where the gravity from Earth and Sun balance out (orbiting the first Sun–Earth ‘Lagrangian point’, L1.) 2. Release the two detectors so that they float freely within their respective containers 3. Using an incredibly sensitive steering mechanism, "fly" the spacecraft around the detectors! - no force will ever be applied to the free-floating detectors again, save the gravity that keeps them in orbit, and the spacecraft will when necessary make minute adjustments to its position, to keep the freefalling detectors in the centre of their housings. So, the theory goes, the only thing that can cause a disturbance of the detectors would be a passing gravitational wave. A fuller explanation of this amazing experimental mission here: m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_S ... Pathfinder

That's an incredible feat of engineering and science. Hopefully, they'll get some results back in the future.

Awesome new images of the plane of our galaxy, the Milky Way, from the Southern hemisphere Quote A spectacular new image of the Milky Way has been released to mark the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). The APEX telescope in Chile has mapped the full area of the Galactic Plane visible from the southern hemisphere for the first time at submillimetre wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves — and in finer detail than recent space-based surveys. [urlhttp://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1606/[/url '" To the right of the main page are links to various sizes of image, zoomable etc. A number of images released including this superb mp4 in ultra HD cdn2.eso.org/videos/ultra_hd/eso1606a.mp4

Awesome new images of the plane of our galaxy, the Milky Way, from the Southern hemisphere Quote A spectacular new image of the Milky Way has been released to mark the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). The APEX telescope in Chile has mapped the full area of the Galactic Plane visible from the southern hemisphere for the first time at submillimetre wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves — and in finer detail than recent space-based surveys. [urlhttp://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1606/[/url '" To the right of the main page are links to various sizes of image, zoomable etc. A number of images released including this superb mp4 in ultra HD cdn2.eso.org/videos/ultra_hd/eso1606a.mp4

Some nice pics of the recent spectacular Northern Lights display. [urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35741589[/url

Europe's newest climate satellite Sentinal-3A is sending back some stunning images of our planet. Check these out...

[url=http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/03/07/sentinel_3a_returns_incredible_photos_of_earth.htmlClick me[/url

Those images are astonishingly detailed, amazing stuff

Quote ="Ferocious Aardvark"Pluto's icy plains - truly astonishing detail, the resolution is around 80 metres per pixel This is a screengrab of a partial image, but for the best view go to the page and click on the full length image and scroll. Awesome. www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto ... w-horizons'" Some interesting theories on a "mobile mantle" on Pluto https://www.ras.org.uk/education-and-ca ... ile-mantle

Quote ="Ferocious Aardvark"Pluto's icy plains - truly astonishing detail, the resolution is around 80 metres per pixel This is a screengrab of a partial image, but for the best view go to the page and click on the full length image and scroll. Awesome. www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto ... w-horizons'" Some interesting theories on a "mobile mantle" on Pluto https://www.ras.org.uk/education-and-ca ... ile-mantle

An awesome new view of the shadow of the Moon crossing the face of the Earth during the 9th March solar eclipse - as seen from the DSCVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory), from a distance of 1 million miles. www.space.com/32224-moon-shadow- ... video.html

An awesome new view of the shadow of the Moon crossing the face of the Earth during the 9th March solar eclipse - as seen from the DSCVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory), from a distance of 1 million miles. www.space.com/32224-moon-shadow- ... video.html

Congrats to Toynbee School in Chandler’s Ford whose magnificent and intrepid teddy bear, Derek, has soared to 95,000 feet and in so doing, proved the shape of the globe! Sadly, at the moment poor Derek is missing, probably abducted by aliens, but his achievement will forever make him a giant among bears. The amazing and heart-wrenching video of his epic and fearless journey here: https://youtu.be/ZokqwxBzDbI

Congrats to Toynbee School in Chandler’s Ford whose magnificent and intrepid teddy bear, Derek, has soared to 95,000 feet and in so doing, proved the shape of the globe! Sadly, at the moment poor Derek is missing, probably abducted by aliens, but his achievement will forever make him a giant among bears. The amazing and heart-wrenching video of his epic and fearless journey here: https://youtu.be/ZokqwxBzDbI

Quote ="Ferocious Aardvark"Congrats to Toynbee School in Chandler’s Ford whose magnificent and intrepid teddy bear, Derek, has soared to 95,000 feet and in so doing, proved the shape of the globe! Sadly, at the moment poor Derek is missing, probably abducted by aliens, but his achievement will forever make him a giant among bears. The amazing and heart-wrenching video of his epic and fearless journey here: https://youtu.be/ZokqwxBzDbI'" Ferocious Aardvark, did you watch the footage? You would of seen Convex, concave, convex back to concave. Check out the fisheye lens..

Quote ="Ferocious Aardvark"Congrats to Toynbee School in Chandler’s Ford whose magnificent and intrepid teddy bear, Derek, has soared to 95,000 feet and in so doing, proved the shape of the globe! Sadly, at the moment poor Derek is missing, probably abducted by aliens, but his achievement will forever make him a giant among bears. The amazing and heart-wrenching video of his epic and fearless journey here: https://youtu.be/ZokqwxBzDbI'" Ferocious Aardvark, did you watch the footage? You would of seen Convex, concave, convex back to concave. Check out the fisheye lens..

I posted a link to a lovely little story about a school sending a bear into near-Space, as its an astronomy gem.

I did allow myself a gentle joke, even though what I said is clearly true, but your comment is indeed ironic from a person with a severely distorted perspective image permanently in his sig!

How come no one else is allowed to post in the Mugwump/Flat Stanley thread, which employs North Korean levels of moderation for anyone other than the true un-believer - but Flat Stanley is perfectly at liberty to post his lunatic ramblings about a flat earth in this one?

He's not, to be fair, he made a valid point, he just spoiled it by having in his sig the exact effect he was pointing out. But yes, we have enough threads about, shall we say, competing theories, and this won't become another.

Astronomers have found a very young "super Jupiter" planet, found wandering around without a parent. That is to say, a free-floating planet, not orbiting any star. Not the first, but close (approx. 95 light years) and very young (10 million years. 2MASS J1119–1137 is between four and eight times the mass of Jupiter, in the mass range between a large planet and a small brown dwarf star. The loner planet belongs in the youngest group of stars in our part of the galaxy, known collectively as the TW Hydrae association. This contains about two dozen 10 million-year-old stars, all moving together through space. This astonishing (if you like this sort of thing) video illustrates the planet, and the TW Hydrae association, moving as a group through space. Mind boggling science. https://youtu.be/1QbPaQAQ-N8 [size=85=#4000FF Produced and directed by David Rodriguez, using visualization software Uniview by SCISS and the American Museum of Natural History’s Digital Universe data[/size

Astronomers have found a very young "super Jupiter" planet, found wandering around without a parent. That is to say, a free-floating planet, not orbiting any star. Not the first, but close (approx. 95 light years) and very young (10 million years. 2MASS J1119–1137 is between four and eight times the mass of Jupiter, in the mass range between a large planet and a small brown dwarf star. The loner planet belongs in the youngest group of stars in our part of the galaxy, known collectively as the TW Hydrae association. This contains about two dozen 10 million-year-old stars, all moving together through space. This astonishing (if you like this sort of thing) video illustrates the planet, and the TW Hydrae association, moving as a group through space. Mind boggling science. https://youtu.be/1QbPaQAQ-N8 [size=85=#4000FF Produced and directed by David Rodriguez, using visualization software Uniview by SCISS and the American Museum of Natural History’s Digital Universe data[/size

Anyone else been enjoying Tim Peake's regular images from around the globe on his facebook page recently?

Mount Etna smoking away last week:




Merseyside, Wirral & Cheshire:



Some real crackers recently.

He's taken some crackers. Always great to see the astronauts pics taken from the ISS.

Some of the photos are truly awe-inspiring, and what it must be like to be up there seeing them with your own eyes ..

there are squillions of astronaut images of the earth, and if you fancy a browse then a fantastic resource is [url=http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth[/url

If you click on the right-side icon ("view the results with cooliris) then you can use the blue slider to scroll along a virtual wall of hundreds of images. Firts, make the wall full-screen (icon at bottom right) then wander along at whatever speed you like, and select any image that takes your fancy

There are several ways to view, thumbnails, galleries, collections etc and a clickable icon displays a map identifying the spot on Earth pictured. You can also download images in various res, and they are click-zoomable, for example here's a detail of one showing a night scene, with the aurora and the glow of dawn beautifully imaged. And whaddya know, as it is a night exposure, you can even see the stars





See full size here: [urlhttp://prnt.sc/azem45[/url

Thanks for that, FA. That's a brilliant site.

On Monday May 9th we are treated to a transit of Mercury crossing the face of the Sun. In the UK it will start at around noon and will take over 7 hours, so as long as you get a clear view of the Sun anytime in that timeslot, and have suitable viewing equipment to keep your eyes safe, everyone can watch it. This video tells you what you need to know. Most local amateur astronomy clubs will be out observing it so maybe get to your local one and peek through some decent telescopes. www.space.com/32780-mercury-tran ... video.html

On Monday May 9th we are treated to a transit of Mercury crossing the face of the Sun. In the UK it will start at around noon and will take over 7 hours, so as long as you get a clear view of the Sun anytime in that timeslot, and have suitable viewing equipment to keep your eyes safe, everyone can watch it. This video tells you what you need to know. Most local amateur astronomy clubs will be out observing it so maybe get to your local one and peek through some decent telescopes. www.space.com/32780-mercury-tran ... video.html

In the most mindblowing bit of astronomical information I've chanced on for a long time, it turns out that the Milky Way has literally hundreds of previously unknown nearby galaxies, that have never been seen before, simply due to being hidden by the Milky Way.

This is an artists's impression, but the positions of the galaxies and their relative shapes and sizes are represented accurately:



The Parkes radio telescope in Aus studied the nearby galaxies. It looked at a total of 883 galaxies, and of which, one third have never been seen before.

As one of the astronomers put it:
"An average galaxy contains 100 billion stars, so finding hundreds of new galaxies hidden behind the Milky Way points to a lot of mass we didn't know about until now."

These galaxies are in the direction of the so-called "Zone of Avoidance, basically directly the other side of the centre of the galaxy from us, and are so hard to see as we have to detect radiation that has managed to get through the entire Milky Way, which is not a lot.

The [url=http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-discovered-hundreds-of-nearby-galaxies-that-were-hidden-by-the-milky-wayfull article is here.[/url
At the end of the article is a good animation illustrating where these galaxies are in relation to us.

As Mars moves closer, here's a great shot of Vallis Marineris, Mars' Grand Canyon on steroids This evening, Mars will be as close as it has been since 2005, and here's a handy viewing guide and link, but if you have a clear view south, you'll easily see both Saturn and Mars. https://astronomynow.com/2016/05/29/see ... pposition/ 11pm to midnight is a good time, and a bonus treat is a pass of the International Space Station (ISS) - this will rise in the West and glide by Jupiter, before rising high in the South, it will be exceptionally high and bright and right above Mars at around 00:08, and will then slowly fade as it glides away and disappears in the East around 00:13 [url=http://prntscr.com/ba6bpkViewing chart[/url If you're still up, the ISS will be back round at about 01:44

As Mars moves closer, here's a great shot of Vallis Marineris, Mars' Grand Canyon on steroids This evening, Mars will be as close as it has been since 2005, and here's a handy viewing guide and link, but if you have a clear view south, you'll easily see both Saturn and Mars. https://astronomynow.com/2016/05/29/see ... pposition/ 11pm to midnight is a good time, and a bonus treat is a pass of the International Space Station (ISS) - this will rise in the West and glide by Jupiter, before rising high in the South, it will be exceptionally high and bright and right above Mars at around 00:08, and will then slowly fade as it glides away and disappears in the East around 00:13 [url=http://prntscr.com/ba6bpkViewing chart[/url If you're still up, the ISS will be back round at about 01:44

The Juno mission is entering the crucial stages this week, and it's worth looking at their website for some great features.

[urlhttps://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/[/url

A great feature is going to be the Junocam where everyone can get actively involved in the mission. You can upload your own images of Jupiter to help mission planners, vote on points of interest to point the spacecraft at for imaging, and download the Raw images straight to your PC.

It's going to be great.

Its all a big fake story because as you well know, the earth is flat.

Don't be silly man , any images will be the creation of CIA , protecting us from viewing the combined US/Nazi base already there , it's the main drop off for the long range trips to Alpha Centauri