Any Astronomy Buffs Here?

DevilHorse said:
An asteroid the size of the Empire State Building will fly within 1.7M miles of the earth. Not expected to revisit any closer:
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/w...id-buzz-earth-friday-safely-passing-106866780

Don't forget to duck if you go outside.

Larry
DevilHorse
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That's not nearly as impressive as the one that flew by on Tuesday. It was the size of 64 Canada geese. (The writer gets dinged for calling them Canadian geese, unless he verified their place of birth.)

https://www.jpost.com/science/article-784093
 
A Couple of Eclipses

As many of you know, on April 8, 2024, mid afternoon, a total solar eclipse will occur and will move from Texas to Vermont.

As often occurs, a solar eclipse is preceded/followed by a lunar eclipse, and that will be the case this year too early in the morning of Monday March 25, 2024.

Just a heads-up.

Larry
DevilHorse
 
DevilHorse said:
As many of you know, on April 8, 2024, mid afternoon, a total solar eclipse will occur and will move from Texas to Vermont.

As often occurs, a solar eclipse is preceded/followed by a lunar eclipse, and that will be the case this year too early in the morning of Monday March 25, 2024.

Just a heads-up.
Click to expand...

It's probably worth noting that this will be a penumbral eclipse only (i.e. neither partial nor total view of Earth's shadow over the mone, but just a general "dimming" of the moon). In other words, it will be fairly subtle to look at.
 
Eclipse 2024

For the 2017 eclipse I was in Greenville, SC and just sat by the lake at Furman U to watch. Had a nice picnic; saw the ducks and geese settle down as the sky darkened. It was cool.

I just booked an April 6-9 visit with my brother's family in Memphis, TN. I figure that should get me close enough to the April eclipse to make it a day trip into totality. Now I just have to find a place to drive to the day of. Any suggestions?
 
camion said:
For the 2017 eclipse I was in Greenville, SC and just sat by the lake at Furman U to watch. Had a nice picnic; saw the ducks and geese settle down as the sky darkened. It was cool.

I just booked an April 6-9 visit with my brother's family in Memphis, TN. I figure that should get me close enough to the April eclipse to make it a day trip into totality. Now I just have to find a place to drive to the day of. Any suggestions?
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We had a camping trip booked not far from Memphis for the eclipse. Unfortunately, life has gotten in the way with the unexpected purchase of land and groundbreaking on a new house, so that trip had to be cancelled.
I'll be wishing you clear skies! (We were in Charleston for 2017 and had a lovely show until 5 minutes before totality when a Wrath of God thunderstorm rolled in and lasted for well over an hour.)
 
DevilHorse said:
As many of you know, on April 8, 2024, mid afternoon, a total solar eclipse will occur and will move from Texas to Vermont.

As often occurs, a solar eclipse is preceded/followed by a lunar eclipse, and that will be the case this year too early in the morning of Monday March 25, 2024.

Just a heads-up.

Larry
DevilHorse
Click to expand...

The April 8th event will be clearly visible from my back yard. And two days afterwards I will go back to noting it is too hot already in TX.
 
Moon Stuff

YmoBeThere said:
Astronomers spot new tiny moons around Neptune and Uranus
The latest tally puts Neptune at 16 known moons and Uranus at 28.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/astronomers-spot-new-tiny-moons-neptune-uranus-rcna140285?

I don't write the headlines, but I do post them with a 13 year old boy's sense of humor.
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Just some thoughts I was having on these moons.

Not much information about the eccentricities of the orbits, which will indicate whether these moons are captured (space schmutz) or naturally developing from the accretion disk (and in the ecliptic). I vote for space schmutz.

A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the semi-major axis of the othermost Neptunian moon (27 year revolution) is about 1 billion miles (14 AU), which is also close to the same distance between Neptune and Uranus. The orbit would need to be out of the ecliptic by a lot for Uranus not to greatly perturb this Neptunian moon's orbit if this was not the case.

Further out than Neptune is Pluto (dwarf planet .. sniff sniff :( ), which has an average distance (875.6 million miles or 9.42 AU) from Neptune that is actually closer to Neptune than is Uranus. But Pluto's orbit is very elliptical, and sometimes is closer to the sun than Neptune. However, its orbit is out of the ecliptic (17 degrees). The closest Neptune and Pluto will ever get is 2.4 AU or 223 Million miles. Neptune's mass is about 1000 times greater than Pluto's.

Science trivia: Uranus and Neptune are the 7th and 8th planets in our solar system. In the periodic table, the element Uranium (U - Atomic Number 92) is followed by Neptunium (NP - Atomic Number 93), this is followed by.... Plutonium (Pu - Atomic Number 94).

Larry
DevilHorse
 
DevilHorse said:
Just some thoughts I was having on these moons.

Not much information about the eccentricities of the orbits, which will indicate whether these moons are captured (space schmutz) or naturally developing from the accretion disk (and in the ecliptic). I vote for space schmutz.

A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the semi-major axis of the othermost Neptunian moon (27 year revolution) is about 1 billion miles (14 AU), which is also close to the same distance between Neptune and Uranus. The orbit would need to be out of the ecliptic by a lot for Uranus not to greatly perturb this Neptunian moon's orbit if this was not the case.

Further out than Neptune is Pluto (dwarf planet .. sniff sniff :( ), which has an average distance (875.6 million miles or 9.42 AU) from Neptune that is actually closer to Neptune than is Uranus. But Pluto's orbit is very elliptical, and sometimes is closer to the sun than Neptune. However, its orbit is out of the ecliptic (17 degrees). The closest Neptune and Pluto will ever get is 2.4 AU or 223 Million miles. Neptune's mass is about 1000 times greater than Pluto's.

Science trivia: Uranus and Neptune are the 7th and 8th planets in our solar system. In the periodic table, the element Uranium (U - Atomic Number 92) is followed by Neptunium (NP - Atomic Number 93), this is followed by... Plutonium (Pu - Atomic Number 94).

Larry
DevilHorse
Click to expand...

The radius of the moon's orbit didn't seem right to me, so I recalculated it to 25 million miles and not 1 billion. Makes more sense now. So the moon's semi-major axis is about 1/40th of the distance between Uranus and Neptune. And 1/35th of the distance between Neptune and Pluto.

Larry
DevilHorse
 
When I was a freshman, one of my TAs told me a story during a lab about how one of her projects had gone awry the year before because of a solar flare. Error correction for flipped bits is generally built into hardware and software, but it isn't always enough. The professor told the class a few days later why all their results were off. Solar storms/solar flares can be a big deal, although I do sometimes find the articles about them in major publications to be sensationalist nonetheless.
 
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