The reason I linked to the French version is it showed the location of SN 1604. It's a pretty interesting part of the sky that we don't see well in Northern Europe, low South in summer.
This image is pretty huge, so I hope it works:
Just to the left of the circle are what look like bright Jupiter and either Mars or Saturn above Sagittarius and on the ecliptic. Antares is due to go Supernova in about a million years. Very similar to Betelgeuse.
Sagittarius A* Black Hole location is shown in the map below in the red circle:
I think I would need to be on a Greek Island to get a decent photo myself.
It would be fun to update Patrick Moore's pocket-size Observers book of Astronomy to have all our spectacular modern photos. Someone should do it. Maybe one of us.
This image is pretty huge, so I hope it works:
Just to the left of the circle are what look like bright Jupiter and either Mars or Saturn above Sagittarius and on the ecliptic. Antares is due to go Supernova in about a million years. Very similar to Betelgeuse.
Sagittarius A* Black Hole location is shown in the map below in the red circle:
I think I would need to be on a Greek Island to get a decent photo myself.
It would be fun to update Patrick Moore's pocket-size Observers book of Astronomy to have all our spectacular modern photos. Someone should do it. Maybe one of us.
I read that Plate 11 in Patrick's book is titled "Dark nebulae in Ophiuchus". No doubt it's a monochrome image crying out for updating!
I really liked Moore's juvenile sci-fi novels when I was a boy. How did he know back then about the caverns of the Moon?
Patrick truly was The Master of the Moon!
Here is his incredible science fiction bibliography: https://sfandfantasy.co.uk/php/pm.php
It was actually Patrick's Mars series that I read as a boy. What wonderful book covers: https://sfandfantasy.co.uk/php/gallery0a.php?subsection=21
You mean THIS one?
Your guess is as good as mine, but there may be Jupiter in that one.
I always liked looking for double stars. The only easy one is in Lyra next to Vega at 3 arcminutes, the double double, and Mizar and Alcor in the Big Bear. You need a telescope for most genuine doubles.
I do find him a bit heavy on the Greek Mythology, which is interesting to a classics scholar but no-one else. But an amazing amount of good information is a genuine pocket book with largely readable print size.
My local library has a new much larger and more lavish DK guide to Astronomy, which I might pick up today.
And, yes, I read all those books too. They usually don't read well to the modern reader, being very weak on character and overly descriptive and altogether a bit schoolboyish.
His Astronomy book should have been called The Boys Book of Astronomy! He always had an image as the cranky old bachelor, but actually his wife was sadly killed in the war, and he never looked for another.
Your guess is as good as mine, but there may be Jupiter in that one.
I always liked looking for double stars. The only easy one is in Lyra next to Vega at 3 arcminutes, the double double, and Mizar and Alcor in the Big Bear. You need a telescope for most genuine doubles.
I do find him a bit heavy on the Greek Mythology, which is interesting to a classics scholar but no-one else. But an amazing amount of good information is a genuine pocket book with largely readable print size.
My local library has a new much larger and more lavish DK guide to Astronomy, which I might pick up today.
And, yes, I read all those books too. They usually don't read well to the modern reader, being very weak on character and overly descriptive and altogether a bit schoolboyish.
His Astronomy book should have been called The Boys Book of Astronomy! He always had an image as the cranky old bachelor, but actually his wife was sadly killed in the war, and he never looked for another.
Patrick claimed that his only love was killed in the war by a Luftwaffe bomb and that was the reason he never married.
He doesn't elaborate on this in his autobiography. It has been said that wartime casualty records fail to substantiate his loss.
Wikipedia relates Moore's 1976 April Fool's Day spoof on BBC Radio2 when he announced a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event that meant that if listeners could jump at that exact moment, 9.47 am, they would experience a temporary sensation of weightlessness. The BBC received many telephone calls from listeners alleging they experienced the sensation!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore
Do you see how I've just managed to swing the discussion, in ever such a small way, back to gravity?
We were discussing Astronomy this afternoon at the Lord Palmy. This was because the girls wanted to know why my bag was so heavy on my way back from the library.
Much enthusiastic thumbing followed of all the constellations in "The Wonders of the Universe". Theresa was particularly interested in Aries. This was because, she excitedly told us, she was born under this sign.
You can imagine how I sighed. "This is not Astrology, it is Astronomy". I then winged it a bit and told her the book says that Aries girls like Romance, but it always ends in tears.
It went further downhill from there with some extremely tired jokes about "Uranus"... do people think this stuff is still funny? 🙄
I am now home and frankly can't wait to start reading the introduction by Dr.Becky Smethurst, who along with female jockey Joanna Mason, is absolutely one of my dream girls.
I can add to the anecdotes about Patrick Moore. Resident mathematician Pistol Pete says he was once crossing to a traffic island in the Charing Cross Road opposite Folyles bookshop when he bumped into a rather rotund man, who turned out to be Patrick Moore. The Island was not big enough for both of them, so he had to hurry on.
Not many people know that Patrick Moore was a talented writer of doggerel verse. His rendering of "The Sexual life of the Camel" had us in stitches at School Speech Day after he presented me with a Science Prize, though he never got invited again.
My very dear friend Michael Portillo said he developed his flamboyant TV jacket style when visiting Bognor's most famous local resident on one of his "Great Train Journeys".
It was Patrick's one regret that he was never allowed to name a constellation after his cats. Felix Major and Felix Minor thus never became household words.
Much enthusiastic thumbing followed of all the constellations in "The Wonders of the Universe". Theresa was particularly interested in Aries. This was because, she excitedly told us, she was born under this sign.
You can imagine how I sighed. "This is not Astrology, it is Astronomy". I then winged it a bit and told her the book says that Aries girls like Romance, but it always ends in tears.
It went further downhill from there with some extremely tired jokes about "Uranus"... do people think this stuff is still funny? 🙄
I am now home and frankly can't wait to start reading the introduction by Dr.Becky Smethurst, who along with female jockey Joanna Mason, is absolutely one of my dream girls.
I can add to the anecdotes about Patrick Moore. Resident mathematician Pistol Pete says he was once crossing to a traffic island in the Charing Cross Road opposite Folyles bookshop when he bumped into a rather rotund man, who turned out to be Patrick Moore. The Island was not big enough for both of them, so he had to hurry on.
Not many people know that Patrick Moore was a talented writer of doggerel verse. His rendering of "The Sexual life of the Camel" had us in stitches at School Speech Day after he presented me with a Science Prize, though he never got invited again.
My very dear friend Michael Portillo said he developed his flamboyant TV jacket style when visiting Bognor's most famous local resident on one of his "Great Train Journeys".
It was Patrick's one regret that he was never allowed to name a constellation after his cats. Felix Major and Felix Minor thus never became household words.
Only a dumbazz like me would still find them funny!
Attachments
I suppose you would have enjoyed the pub jokes about soap and Klingons too... 🙄
Anywhoo, for the really interested Astrophysics student here are some gleanings from my brief reading of Cosmos.
It really is a very good book which in days gone by would have been called an Encyclopedia of Astronomy.
One of the better sections was on the very large scale of Galaxies and the filament structure of their distribution into things like our local 500M LY supercluster of Laniakea.
In our Universe if you want to speculate what colliding Galaxies look like, you just have to look around. Recall Andromeda and Triangulum are 2M LY away, and we are bound to them gravitationally.
At 40M LY this is the Whirlpool Galaxy and its largish neighbour. Most of the almost fractal looking star formation is caused by the collision.
Amazingly, Galaxies can pass through each other almost unscathed, but after a few oscillations do merge. Clearly there is a damping factor involved in the gas clouds.
The Antennae Galaxies at 20M LY have actually passed through each other and are about to bounce back together for a second time:
I suppose it might end up as an Elliptical, but I really don't know.
The larger view of trailing or ejected gas looks like this:
What you can't see is the clouds of what we think is dark matter which seems to accompany galaxies. These are illustrated in the book too.
This is what General Relativity fluid dynamics looks like. Matter and Energy in a dance with that inconveniently permanently expanding emptyish Spacetime.
It becomes clear to me that the Universe will expand faster and faster forever. No fudge factor like the Cosmolgical Constant will stop this. Energy/Matter is getting increasingly thin.
Empty Space left to its own devices expands or accelerates. Einstein realised this, and didn't like it. For particle physicists, Special Relativity, which is more about velocity and mass/energy equivalence, largely suffices.
Anywhoo, for the really interested Astrophysics student here are some gleanings from my brief reading of Cosmos.
It really is a very good book which in days gone by would have been called an Encyclopedia of Astronomy.
One of the better sections was on the very large scale of Galaxies and the filament structure of their distribution into things like our local 500M LY supercluster of Laniakea.
In our Universe if you want to speculate what colliding Galaxies look like, you just have to look around. Recall Andromeda and Triangulum are 2M LY away, and we are bound to them gravitationally.
At 40M LY this is the Whirlpool Galaxy and its largish neighbour. Most of the almost fractal looking star formation is caused by the collision.
Amazingly, Galaxies can pass through each other almost unscathed, but after a few oscillations do merge. Clearly there is a damping factor involved in the gas clouds.
The Antennae Galaxies at 20M LY have actually passed through each other and are about to bounce back together for a second time:
I suppose it might end up as an Elliptical, but I really don't know.
The larger view of trailing or ejected gas looks like this:
What you can't see is the clouds of what we think is dark matter which seems to accompany galaxies. These are illustrated in the book too.
This is what General Relativity fluid dynamics looks like. Matter and Energy in a dance with that inconveniently permanently expanding emptyish Spacetime.
It becomes clear to me that the Universe will expand faster and faster forever. No fudge factor like the Cosmolgical Constant will stop this. Energy/Matter is getting increasingly thin.
Empty Space left to its own devices expands or accelerates. Einstein realised this, and didn't like it. For particle physicists, Special Relativity, which is more about velocity and mass/energy equivalence, largely suffices.
I have looked into why this is:
The distance between neighboring stars in a galaxy is approximately equal to 10 million times the diameter of a star, meaning that stars rarely collide with each other.
By comparison, galaxies collide quite frequently as the distances between galaxies is only approximately equal to 20 times the diameter of a galaxy.
To illustrate the vastness of interstellar space, let's imagine a model in which the diameters of the Sun and its nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri, are represented by table tennis balls. On this scale the distance between the two stars would be 1100 kilometres.
In comparison, intergalactic space is much more crowded. Imagine a model in which the diameters of the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are represented by table tennis balls. On this scale the galaxies would only be 1 metre apart.
Wikipedia has an article on "astrophysical fluid dynamics": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_fluid_dynamics
"Astrophysical fluid dynamics deals with the application of fluid dynamics and its equations in the movement of the fluids in space.
Most of the Interstellar Medium is not at rest, but is in supersonic motion under the action of supernova explosions, stellar winds and radiation fields and the time dependent gravitational field due to spiral density waves in the stellar disc of the galaxy. Since supersonic motions almost always involve shock waves, these play a crucial role. The galaxy also contains a dynamically significant magnetic field which means that the dynamics is governed by the equations of compressible magnetohydrodynamics."
I looked up "magnetohydrodynamics" to find it is the study of the magnetic properties and behaviour of electrically conducting fluids.
Shades of the Electric Universe! 😉
Here is a published work on the fluid dynamics of the interstellar and intergalactic medium: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400839087/html
Quote: "The interstellar medium is a fluid, and we need to understand how this fluid moves in response to pressure gradients within it, gravitational forces, and electromagnetic stresses."
Have you seen the price of Princeton's Astrophysics books? There are about 66 of them around an eye-watering 339 Pounds each! FWIW, Princeton is a sort of retirement sinecure for burnt-out geniuses. Er, IMO. 🤣
Naturally I was curious what the cover of Bruce P. Braine's (sic) essential tome. Might be the Lagoon Nebula M8 at around 6,000 LY toward galactic centre which is 26,000 LY away, but really one star forming nebula looks the same as another to me...
If you think you have seen it before, YOU HAVE. The Lagoon is one of two really bright naked eye nebulae in the Northern skies, the other being the Orion nebula.
I misidentified it as Jupiter in the top page image of The Great Dark Horse cloud. What I thought must be Mars is actually Messier 22 star cluster at 10,000LY in Sagittarius.
What I thought was Jupiter (Again...) in the learned Patrick's image is the Theta Ophiucus star.
My take on the Fluid Dynamics of the Cosmos, is we are all like little corks bobbing around on the stormy ocean waves of SpaceTime with its Dark Energy. Hopefully we won't get sucked into one of those Black Hole whirlpools.
With all due modesty, I only learned one new thing from the Cosmos book. MERCURY is unexpectedly dense, being 75% dense Iron core and very little magma due to multiple collisions with protoplanets near the Sun.
You will recall that most rock is around 3g/cc, whereas Iron is nearer 8g/cc.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? 😢
It means the gravity on Mercury is exactly the same as on Mars, 0.38g, despite it being way smaller!
Not many people know that. 😎
Naturally I was curious what the cover of Bruce P. Braine's (sic) essential tome. Might be the Lagoon Nebula M8 at around 6,000 LY toward galactic centre which is 26,000 LY away, but really one star forming nebula looks the same as another to me...
If you think you have seen it before, YOU HAVE. The Lagoon is one of two really bright naked eye nebulae in the Northern skies, the other being the Orion nebula.
I misidentified it as Jupiter in the top page image of The Great Dark Horse cloud. What I thought must be Mars is actually Messier 22 star cluster at 10,000LY in Sagittarius.
What I thought was Jupiter (Again...) in the learned Patrick's image is the Theta Ophiucus star.
My take on the Fluid Dynamics of the Cosmos, is we are all like little corks bobbing around on the stormy ocean waves of SpaceTime with its Dark Energy. Hopefully we won't get sucked into one of those Black Hole whirlpools.
With all due modesty, I only learned one new thing from the Cosmos book. MERCURY is unexpectedly dense, being 75% dense Iron core and very little magma due to multiple collisions with protoplanets near the Sun.
You will recall that most rock is around 3g/cc, whereas Iron is nearer 8g/cc.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? 😢
It means the gravity on Mercury is exactly the same as on Mars, 0.38g, despite it being way smaller!
Not many people know that. 😎
Not many people know that a space probe is currently studying Mercury.
It is ESA's BepiColombo probe which flew past Mercury for the 5th time at the beginning of this month and is due to enter orbit around the planet in 2026.
Artists impression
BepiColombo is only the 3rd Mercury probe, the 1st being NASA's Mariner 10 which flew past three times between 1974 and 1975, and the 2nd being NASA’s Messenger, which orbited the planet from 2011 to 2015.
https://scitechdaily.com/bepicolombo-unmasks-mercurys-hidden-surface-with-infrared-breakthrough/
It is ESA's BepiColombo probe which flew past Mercury for the 5th time at the beginning of this month and is due to enter orbit around the planet in 2026.
Artists impression
BepiColombo is only the 3rd Mercury probe, the 1st being NASA's Mariner 10 which flew past three times between 1974 and 1975, and the 2nd being NASA’s Messenger, which orbited the planet from 2011 to 2015.
https://scitechdaily.com/bepicolombo-unmasks-mercurys-hidden-surface-with-infrared-breakthrough/
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NASA has just released this new festive image of NGC 2264, aka the "Christmas Tree Cluster":
https://www.space.com/the-universe/the-christmas-tree-cluster-gets-a-festive-makeover-photos
Optical data has been combined with X-ray data to produce a composite image of this Milky Way feature.
The gas between the young stars has been coloured green, while the stars themselves are multi-coloured.
This beats the image of NGC 2264 released last Christmas in regard to its resolution of detail, although then NASA made the stars flicker!
https://www.space.com/the-universe/the-christmas-tree-cluster-gets-a-festive-makeover-photos
Optical data has been combined with X-ray data to produce a composite image of this Milky Way feature.
The gas between the young stars has been coloured green, while the stars themselves are multi-coloured.
This beats the image of NGC 2264 released last Christmas in regard to its resolution of detail, although then NASA made the stars flicker!
Maybe just me, but "The Christmas Tree Cluster" looks more like The Grinch... 🤣
My 2024 nomination for heavenly Christmas Decorations is "The Garnet Star", Mu Cephei, promoted by famous Astronomer William Herschel around 1780, when the World was in turmoil with revolutionary ideas including the Illuminati and other nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_Cephei
The thing is enormous and hugely bright, but only magnitude 4 at about 5000LY.
Looks easy enough to find, between the W of Cassiopeia and Deneb in the Swan in the West this time of year:
Alas my efforts last night were flummoxed by light pollution and cloud. I couldn't see a thing.
It has been a strange season for theories. A local Reverend told a class in Lee-on-Solent that SANTA DOESN"T EXIST!
You can imagine the furore from parents and the scenes of bawling children. The Reverend expressed regret at his choice of school sermon.
It got worse with this headline:
https://aeon.co/essays/scientists-a...ith-a-bang?utm_source=pocket_discover_science
You can imagine how horrified I was by such nonsense. But it turns out the so-called "Scientist", Daniel Linford, is more of the Philosophical or Theological pursuasion.
He has based his ideas on a wildly speculative and unproven piece of maths called the Malamant-Manchak Theorem. Surely the merest Conjecture, not a proper Theorem.
Vis this sober refutation by cooler heads:
Whatever next? I'll be leaving my stocking out this Christmas, and so should YOU.
Seasonal Greetings from Steve. 🙂
My 2024 nomination for heavenly Christmas Decorations is "The Garnet Star", Mu Cephei, promoted by famous Astronomer William Herschel around 1780, when the World was in turmoil with revolutionary ideas including the Illuminati and other nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_Cephei
The thing is enormous and hugely bright, but only magnitude 4 at about 5000LY.
Looks easy enough to find, between the W of Cassiopeia and Deneb in the Swan in the West this time of year:
Alas my efforts last night were flummoxed by light pollution and cloud. I couldn't see a thing.
It has been a strange season for theories. A local Reverend told a class in Lee-on-Solent that SANTA DOESN"T EXIST!
You can imagine the furore from parents and the scenes of bawling children. The Reverend expressed regret at his choice of school sermon.
It got worse with this headline:
https://aeon.co/essays/scientists-a...ith-a-bang?utm_source=pocket_discover_science
You can imagine how horrified I was by such nonsense. But it turns out the so-called "Scientist", Daniel Linford, is more of the Philosophical or Theological pursuasion.
He has based his ideas on a wildly speculative and unproven piece of maths called the Malamant-Manchak Theorem. Surely the merest Conjecture, not a proper Theorem.
Vis this sober refutation by cooler heads:
Whatever next? I'll be leaving my stocking out this Christmas, and so should YOU.
Seasonal Greetings from Steve. 🙂
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What a monster!
Size of Mu Cephei compared to Sun and solar system
Have a monster Christmas everyone!
The Parker Solar Probe is attempting to make history this Christmas Eve with the closest-ever approach to the Sun.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9q7lnyw25wo
Some fascinating facts about the Parker Solar Probe:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9q7lnyw25wo
Some fascinating facts about the Parker Solar Probe:
- At its closest approach, it will be only 3.8 million miles from the Sun's surface.
- It will have to endure temperatures of 1,400 °C, protected by its sun-facing heat shield.
- At a speed of 430,000 mph, it will be moving faster than any man-made object.
The life expectancy of a high mass star like Mu Cephei is only around a few million years.
https://www.aavso.org/content/mu-cephei
That's obviously too little time for life to have evolved on one of its planets - and none have been detected as yet.