With my prodigious and useful knowledge of horseracing, I am about to astonish you with one of those strange but true facts relating to the Sport of Kings.
One of the greatest horses of all time was born during the annular Eclipse of 01 April 1764, visible in England and documented by The Royal Society!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(horse)
Now that IS amazing. As was my triumph on raceday Saturday 22nd. on the unfancied "Lorna B" racehorse.
The form:
I can spot a Dark Horse, lightly raced and half-sister to regular and memorable winner "Archduke Ferdinand", the horse that started WW1....
Relive my epic 28-1 triumph here:
You can imagine I bought chocolate biscuits for all at the Betfred bookies, and told my sporting companions all about it. They struggled to smile, having lost their shirts as usual.
I wonder if our raceday on Saturday 29th. March is auspicious for horses named Moon or Sun or Stars? Time will tell.
One of the greatest horses of all time was born during the annular Eclipse of 01 April 1764, visible in England and documented by The Royal Society!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(horse)
Now that IS amazing. As was my triumph on raceday Saturday 22nd. on the unfancied "Lorna B" racehorse.
The form:
I can spot a Dark Horse, lightly raced and half-sister to regular and memorable winner "Archduke Ferdinand", the horse that started WW1....
Relive my epic 28-1 triumph here:
You can imagine I bought chocolate biscuits for all at the Betfred bookies, and told my sporting companions all about it. They struggled to smile, having lost their shirts as usual.
I wonder if our raceday on Saturday 29th. March is auspicious for horses named Moon or Sun or Stars? Time will tell.
Steve, have your "sporting companions" ever suggested you stick your horses where the Sun don't shine?
P.S. I would describe any horse born during a solar eclipse as a "Dark Horse".
It is rare for me to get cross, but my experience is that the only people who disparage Horse Racing are the sort of people who foolishly wager instead on Football results.
Such a person might, for instance, have lost their shirt on the Scottish football team this week... 😛
Did I not advise you all to back "Notable Speech" in the Sussex Stakes last year?
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...enerates-gravity.393908/page-230#post-7750484
Not only did it win. It won in an historically fast time of 1:35.97.
Now I must get back to my racecards for Saturday. Already I like "Great Chieftain", "Witch Hunter" and "Midnight Lion", and dislike the King's Horse "Bouquet de Paris" just because he is not a patch on His mother.
The 18.00 Golden Goals Maiden Fillies' Stakes at Newcastle has three horses named Star, which is perplexing me.
https://www.sportinglife.com/racing...s-golden-goals-maiden-fillies-stakes-gbb-race
I also like horses named Blue and Kitty. So this one is wide open.
Such a person might, for instance, have lost their shirt on the Scottish football team this week... 😛
Did I not advise you all to back "Notable Speech" in the Sussex Stakes last year?
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...enerates-gravity.393908/page-230#post-7750484
Not only did it win. It won in an historically fast time of 1:35.97.
Now I must get back to my racecards for Saturday. Already I like "Great Chieftain", "Witch Hunter" and "Midnight Lion", and dislike the King's Horse "Bouquet de Paris" just because he is not a patch on His mother.
The 18.00 Golden Goals Maiden Fillies' Stakes at Newcastle has three horses named Star, which is perplexing me.
https://www.sportinglife.com/racing...s-golden-goals-maiden-fillies-stakes-gbb-race
I also like horses named Blue and Kitty. So this one is wide open.
What was this mysterious spiral in the sky over the UK last night?
It wasn't a spiral galaxy, and it definitely wasn't aliens!
It wasn't a spiral galaxy, and it definitely wasn't aliens!
Do you remember the Spot the Difference games back in the early days of space exploration?
Well, you can now play spot the difference in the modern age of space exploration:
Well, you can now play spot the difference in the modern age of space exploration:
- Former Artemis website states NASA "will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon".
- Current Artemis website states "With NASA’s Artemis campaign, we are exploring the moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars".
They probably ALL had scientific training. If you wanted to get a bunch of diverse people to work together you need to send a gangbanger (with an AK-47 of course), a vidiot and his PlayStation, a Wall Street executive, and an engineer. See if anything gets accomplished then. Or if anyone survives the trip.
Be prepared Steve!
Even the BBC is certain it's going to happen at midnight tonight, 27 March.
And it's going to "light up our night sky!". 😉
Even the BBC is certain it's going to happen at midnight tonight, 27 March.
And it's going to "light up our night sky!". 😉
We were discussing NASA new non-woke policy in line with the new Executive Order from the White House.
We concluded it's now going to be "Whitey on the Moon" again. 🤣
@Galu, another rubbish video! They make this stuff up, you know. It's a 500/1 shot any night for the next 18 months. I have calculated it.
And it fades substantially within a day. So my battery is charged. As it goes, weather last night was dreck.
Many people have noticed that the new Moon looks like a BANANA, as have I:
So suppose this banana is 2000 miles long at 240,000 miles away.
What would it look like if it was 270 miles away, like the International Space Station?
Somebody has done the math!
I found that truly interesting.
We concluded it's now going to be "Whitey on the Moon" again. 🤣
@Galu, another rubbish video! They make this stuff up, you know. It's a 500/1 shot any night for the next 18 months. I have calculated it.
And it fades substantially within a day. So my battery is charged. As it goes, weather last night was dreck.
Many people have noticed that the new Moon looks like a BANANA, as have I:
So suppose this banana is 2000 miles long at 240,000 miles away.
What would it look like if it was 270 miles away, like the International Space Station?
Somebody has done the math!
I found that truly interesting.
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And not in the least bit rubbish at all! 😉
P.S. A NASA spokesperson has said that "it is important to note that the change in language does not indicate a change in crew assignments".
Grossly off topic but that was System7's mind at rest!
[Did you notice that the first three horses in the quoted Newcastle race are all Irish!]
My friend Alex was rambling at 'Spoons about how big the Solar System was in terms of the size of Southsea Common and the Sun being the size of a football or something.
Best left to PROFESSIONALS, like myself, I felt. I know how to do this for the Solar System. But a bit vague about the nearest stars.
But here's an amazing but true fact, if the Sun was the size of a chickpea around 1cm, so the Earth would be a meter away and like a speck of dust at 1 AU. 30-40 metres would take you to Neptune and Pluto.
How far away would similar sized double star Alpha Centauri (A+B) be?
It's a lot, isn't it? It's why we aren't going to the stars in the near future, not even the nearest ones. Tiny Proxima Centauri orbits Alpha Centauri at a distance of about 15 km (0.2 LY) on this scale every half million years.
How far are stars anyway. Some answers here, and this guy is a very expert astronomer who bounces lasers off Apollo 15's reflector and stuff to measure the Moon's distance to centimetres:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/05/how-far-are-stars/
In the course of reading that article, I learned what the whopping stars around us are. Deneb in Cygnus. Delta and Eta Canis Major. 61 Cygni. And TNT's Epsilon Aurigae, photographed here before he broke his camera:
Epsilon is the one centre frame:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Aurigae
We are actually quite lucky to have Alpha Centauri so near at 4LY. Bit of a fluke. The mean distance ought to be about 10 light years to a Sun like star.
Best left to PROFESSIONALS, like myself, I felt. I know how to do this for the Solar System. But a bit vague about the nearest stars.
But here's an amazing but true fact, if the Sun was the size of a chickpea around 1cm, so the Earth would be a meter away and like a speck of dust at 1 AU. 30-40 metres would take you to Neptune and Pluto.
How far away would similar sized double star Alpha Centauri (A+B) be?
About 300 Kilometers
It's a lot, isn't it? It's why we aren't going to the stars in the near future, not even the nearest ones. Tiny Proxima Centauri orbits Alpha Centauri at a distance of about 15 km (0.2 LY) on this scale every half million years.
How far are stars anyway. Some answers here, and this guy is a very expert astronomer who bounces lasers off Apollo 15's reflector and stuff to measure the Moon's distance to centimetres:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/05/how-far-are-stars/
In the course of reading that article, I learned what the whopping stars around us are. Deneb in Cygnus. Delta and Eta Canis Major. 61 Cygni. And TNT's Epsilon Aurigae, photographed here before he broke his camera:
Epsilon is the one centre frame:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Aurigae
We are actually quite lucky to have Alpha Centauri so near at 4LY. Bit of a fluke. The mean distance ought to be about 10 light years to a Sun like star.
Yes, I related to that one. I usually read the comments to judge how serious the video is. It is clickbait...
We've got some good weather this week, so have the usual 500/1 chance. I was out last night:
Corona is rising in the East around midnight. 2/3 the way from blue Vega to orange Arcturus. Here 4s, f2.5 ISO 800 eff. 75mm and brightened up digitally.
I don't know how the mouse pointer got in there. You can ignore it.
The Nova is expected in the bottom left 3cm below Epsilon. That is Alphecca top right. I don't think we can see the actual star, being magnitude 11 usually.
Eclipse in 2 hours. Think I will try projecting onto paper with my telescope.
We've got some good weather this week, so have the usual 500/1 chance. I was out last night:
Corona is rising in the East around midnight. 2/3 the way from blue Vega to orange Arcturus. Here 4s, f2.5 ISO 800 eff. 75mm and brightened up digitally.
I don't know how the mouse pointer got in there. You can ignore it.
The Nova is expected in the bottom left 3cm below Epsilon. That is Alphecca top right. I don't think we can see the actual star, being magnitude 11 usually.
Eclipse in 2 hours. Think I will try projecting onto paper with my telescope.
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Nice partial eclipse projection, Steve. Unfortunately, the cloud cover is total up here.
I offered a a similar answer to yours back in December, which I shall elaborate on here:
Imagine a model in which the diameters of the Sun and Proxima Centauri are represented by table tennis balls. On this scale the distance between the two stars would be 1100 kilometres. This illustrates how empty interstellar space is and explains why stars are unlikely to collide during their wanderings.
Now 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. This illustrates how crowded intergalactic space is and explains why collisions between galaxies are so common.
Yes, the Stars don't take up much Space! Still, one chickpea every 200 miles doesn't seem a lot... 😕
Here is my setup, which is ace, IMO, and much better than fitting a square cardboard shade on a straight setup:
And here is my Moon Eclipse, 15 days ago:
Moon eclipse: Friday 05.45 AM 14 March 2025.
Sun Eclipse : Saturday 11.00 AM 29 March 2025
Next Full Moon: Sunday 00.22 AM 13 April 2025
According to the Rote, the Siderial orbit (against the stars) of the Moon is 27.3 days. the Synodic period (New and Full Moons) is 29.53 days.
But this is not working here. The Synodic period is around 29 and 3/4! 🤔
I looked this up at Wiki, and the Synodic period is actually 29.53 +/- 0.6 or +/- 14.5 hours due to the Moon's elliiptical orbit.
Another discovery by the Citizen Scientist. I amaze myself sometimes. 😎
Here is my setup, which is ace, IMO, and much better than fitting a square cardboard shade on a straight setup:
And here is my Moon Eclipse, 15 days ago:
Moon eclipse: Friday 05.45 AM 14 March 2025.
Sun Eclipse : Saturday 11.00 AM 29 March 2025
Next Full Moon: Sunday 00.22 AM 13 April 2025
According to the Rote, the Siderial orbit (against the stars) of the Moon is 27.3 days. the Synodic period (New and Full Moons) is 29.53 days.
But this is not working here. The Synodic period is around 29 and 3/4! 🤔
I looked this up at Wiki, and the Synodic period is actually 29.53 +/- 0.6 or +/- 14.5 hours due to the Moon's elliiptical orbit.
Another discovery by the Citizen Scientist. I amaze myself sometimes. 😎
The right-angled eyepiece is certainly convenient.
As a youth, I used to monitor the movement of sunspots using a Charles Frank Junior Astronomical Telescope like this one:
Projection displayed the sunspots in fine detail, but my telescope had to poke through a large cardboard sunshade like you mentioned above.
Sunspots should have been visible in your partial eclipse projection since NASA announced in October 2024 that the solar maximum had arrived.
