685 replies to this topic

[Nparker]

That's over 8 quadrillion miles away.  We won't be probing it for life any time soon. 

And with nearly 2 times Earth's gravity, if we do ever visit, taking a stroll on the surface will be hard going. Conversely, Kepler-452b's inhabitants would have a bouncey good time here on old Terra.

[VicHockeyFan]

So, for this eclipse on Sunday night, weather looks good.  But it pretty much is happening as soon as the moon comes up.  So I ask, where is the best place to go to see the moon rise?  And where exactly does it rise from (I know it's the east), ie. over what landmark if I'm looking from say, downtown?

[VicHockeyFan]

In case this helps.  I chose V8N since I though that's near Mt. Tolmie and Mt. Doug.

 

[VicHockeyFan]

[sebberry]

Event      Time in Victoria*   Visible in Victoria

Penumbral Eclipse begins   Sep 27 at 5:11:47 PM   No, below horizon
Partial Eclipse begins   Sep 27 at 6:07:13 PM   No, below horizon
Full Eclipse begins   Sep 27 at 7:11:12 PM   Yes

Maximum Eclipse   Sep 27 at 7:47:09 PM   Yes
Full Eclipse ends   Sep 27 at 8:23:05 PM   Yes
Partial Eclipse ends   Sep 27 at 9:27:05 PM   Yes
Penumbral Eclipse ends   Sep 27 at 10:22:31 PM   Yes

 

http://www.timeandda...15-september-28

[Mike K.]

"But researchers from UC Berkeley’s SETI Institute think it could be something else entirely: They think this could be a sign of alien technology. Boyajian is working with SETI and Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, to develop a proposal to observe the star with NRAO’s Green Bank Telescope to search for radio waves. If they detect anything intriguing, they then have plans to use the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico to listen for what could be the sounds of alien technology."

 

 

http://www.iflscienc...mysterious-star

[VicHockeyFan]

^ This is very cool.

 

They are excited about turning their radio-telescopes this way to see if they can find radio waves there, that would maybe be a sign of technology use by the aliens - and if they find it, it's 1400 years ago, since it's that many light year away.

 

Why the discovery of a strange star has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure

 

 

 

But one finding from the program was unlike anything else scientists had ever seen. Volunteers marked it out as unusual in 2011, right after the program started: a star whose light curves seemed to dip tremendously at irregular intervals. At one point, about 800 days into the survey, the star’s brightness dropped by 15 percent. Later, around day 1,500, it dropped by a shocking 22 percent. Whatever was causing the dips, it could not have been a planet – even a Jupiter-sized planet, the biggest in our solar system, would only dim this star by 1 percent as it transited across, Slate reported. (The Kepler telescope was badly damaged in 2013, so the researchers don’t have data from more recent dips, if there were any).

 

 

 

Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build

 

 

Scientists – at least, the ones who like to theorize about these things – have long said that an advanced alien civilization would be marked by its ability to harness the energy from its sun (rather than scrabbling over its planet’s resources like us puny earthlings). They envision something like a Dyson Sphere, a hypothetical megastructure first proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson that would orbit or even encompass a star, capturing its power and putting it to use.

 

Obviously, a Dyson sphere has never been spotted in real life, though they’re all over science fiction. But if one were to exist, it wouldn’t look like a metal ball around the sun – it would probably comprise a chain of smaller satellites or space habitats, something that would block its star’s light as weirdly and irregularly as the light of KIC 8462852 has been blocked. That’s why researchers who are interested in finding alien life are so excited about the finding.

 

Boyajian, Wright and Andrew Siemion, the director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, are now working on getting access to the massive radio dishes they can point at the star in search of the kinds of radio waves usually emitted by technology.

 

http://news.national...n-megastructure

 

Of course, the star in question is about 1,481 light-years away from Earth – meaning that even if aliens did create a giant solar panel complex out there, they did so in the 6th century, while we were emptying chamber pots out of second story windows and fighting off the first bubonic plague pandemic.

 

[sebberry]

Stargazers around the world are hoping to catch a glimpse of Mars on Monday night, as the red planet makes its closest approach to Earth in more than a decade.

For the past two weeks, Mars has been appearing brighter than usual in the night sky as it crosses paths with Earth at a distance of about 75 million kilometres.

The encounter happens every 26 months, but some encounters are closer than others due to Mars’ elliptical orbit, National Geographic astronomy columnist Andrew Fazekas told CTV News Channel.

[...]

http://www.ctvnews.c...xpert-1.2924091
 

[VicHockeyFan]

http://dailyhive.com...s-across-canada

 

The Northern Lights will be visible across Canada tonight

 

[AllseeingEye]

Thanks for the heads up VHF. Might have to break out my "real" (Olympus PEN EP3) camera and tripod and take some pics. Although we live in the midst of suburbia the backyard is well shielded from street and other light sources so much so it might actually be worth the effort.

[Rob Randall]

A couple of reports of a meteor over Westshore way last night--one View Royal resident saying he heard a boom and the house shook.

[Mike K.]

Oh wow

[Rob Randall]

 

 

‎Dan Little‎ to You Know You're From Victoria, BC When...

12 hrs · Saanichton · 

 

10 mins ago I sawcan amazing meteor shoot east to west across Victoria!! Did anyone else see it? I was looking southwest towards sooke from Saanichton??

[Mike K.]

People saw it and heard it in Alberta, too, according to a woman who posted to VV's Facebook page. Some folks locally saw the meteor but didn't hear the boom, others saw/heard both, and others only heard the boom.

 

Crazy.

[lanforod]

Sorry, I'll tell them to slow down next time they visit for their annual probing.

[Mike K.]

A lunar eclipse will be visible in Victoria on February 10th. The eclipse will begin at 2:34PM and end at 6:53PM, so by the time it gets dark we should be able to get a pretty decent view.

 

February's moon is referred to as the "Snow Moon," or the "Hunger Moon" by some cultures, as the deepest snows tend to occur this month.

 

And then on February 11th we're going have the opportunity to see the "New Year Comet," which we reappears in the night sky every five years, approximately.

 

Weather forecast: the forecast, so far, calls for cloud cover, but on either end of the 10th and 11th there are patchy skies, meaning we could still get to catch a glimpse of both events.

[HB]

The eclipse will begin at 2:34PM

 

??? the Moon doesnt rise here until 5:30pm and its a partial eclipse

[VicHockeyFan]

Ya it's going to be barely noticeable it's so partial.

[Mike K.]

??? the Moon doesnt rise here until 5:30pm and its a partial eclipse

 

The moon still exists even though we can't see it.

[HB]

Ya so do little green men walking around mars ..

 

Eclipses only occur during Full Moons.

A full moon always rises after the sun sets

 

 

 

On Friday its an odd one because the moon rises only one minute after the sun sets

 

 

Your post A lunar eclipse will be visible in Victoria on February 10th. The eclipse will begin at 2:34PM and end at 6:53PM  suggested that eclipse would be visible here beginning at 2:34 pm

 

I am only setting the record straight in fact I do not believe that the moon will be above the horizon at 2:34 pm local time  anywhere