Stars / Astronomy / Astrophotography / Telescopes / Astro

Well, I waited up. At 4.59 Mars started setting behind the moon, and within 15 seconds a thick blob of cloud got in the way. Short video to follow. Harrumph.

Visited Paranal observatory in Chile today for a peek at the VLT. My god, there's a lot of technology going on in these things. Laser driven adaptive optics, optical interferometry etc. Plus the 8m mirror was very impressive. 7/6 would go again.

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That is wonderful. How did you get to see it?

Ooh, that's on my list of things to see! The VLT has been the workhorse of ground based astronomy for decades now.

They do free public tours on a Saturday (which you have to pre-book). Getting there is a bit tricky as there's no public transport. I just hired a car and drove through the desert from Antofagasta.

Good to see my tax dollars put to good use 😜

And we're past the winter solstice.

Days to get longer and the sun to rise higher, bring on the spring!

Belated posting, here is some rough footage of Mars setting behind the moon
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AsopeJT-rgkngv06cOL-HlF11WZgRA

Hello. Is there a favoured app for sky watching? I used to have one that you could point in the sky etc, but it kept going out of whack and was generally a bit too fussy/detailed for my liking. Just after something to quickly check interesting events with my daughter.

Stellarium is generally my go-to (telescope pun not intended), I've found Google SkyMap to be a bit wonky on the aiming side of things but both are free options (Stellarium has a premium version but I think the free one is perfectly fine to use)

Stellarium

Second this!

And Redshift Sky. I've spent the money for the premium for Stellarium (support the developers and whatnot)

Stellarium is my go-to desktop teaching aid. Does everything you need apart from printable sky maps.

Thanks this is exactly what I was after.

Going up to north Scotland at the end of May and was thinking it would great to have something both for the nighttime sky and also wildlife.

Is there anywhere good for second hand spotter scopes? Rather not get something new as it will have minimal use outside holiday trips (given we live in central London…)

Cash converters usually have some bits and pieces.

Crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter looking very nice tonight

Saw the moon and planets putting the rubbish out, Looking a bit star wars, I guess you can see the dark bit of the moon as its illuminated by light reflected from the day side of the earth?

Will find binoculars and see if I can see the Jovian moons.

Mind-blowing:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/22/universe-breakers-james-webb-telescope-detects-six-ancient-galaxies?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Very rubbish phone shots!

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Another crap phone pic

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My friend in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia just sent me this

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I guess you can see the dark bit of the moon as its illuminated by light reflected from the day side of the earth?

Yes. This is known as earthshine, sun to earth to moon to earth...

I finished my degree in astrophysics in 2010 while just was just a promise. Everyone was talking about how it would move things on and the last 6 months or so have been fascinating.

Cosmology is getting a real going over post Planck, its reminiscent of the 1890s when Kelvin talked about dotting Is and crossing Ts. The crisis in cosmology and now this, it's brilliant.

A couple of shots from Paisley

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Do these '6 ancient galaxies',
(and presumably many other the JWT just hasn't been pointed towards yet),
mean that we,
(well astronomers, astrophysicists & cosmologists)
'need' less Dark Matter for current theories to hang together?

I don't know... And the implications are probably not that clear for now, if they do then out to be galaxies and not something else then there are a few parameters or assumption of the cosmological model that might need to be tweaked or worse.