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Posted by Len Entwisle at 20:32 on 2013 Mar 18
To get you started with a fair amount of information have a look here Spectroscopy Links . You can access the JBAA and look at various papers published there. Maurice Gavin has plenty of info (as also has Robin Leadbeater). There are a few YouTube pieces on there too by Nytecam (M Gavin)& some good reading in recent books by Ken Harrison ( Published by Springer).There are several Yahoo Groups on the topic too .Hope this helps
Posted by Roy Hughes at 09:34 on 2013 Mar 15
The channel 4 program (IMHO the better of the two programs!) is repeated tonight at 19:30.
Posted by Richard Miles at 16:13 on 2013 Mar 11
A good documentary for sure. There was one mistaken comment I picked up on – look out for the last sentence in the following commentary:23:14[Iain Stewart]But could there have been another scenario? The meteorite landed at a latitude of 55 degrees North. Had it arrived just a few hours later, we would have been directly in its flight path. So was this a near-miss for us?23:36[Alan Fitzsimmons]If the asteroid had been in a different part of its orbit so it didn’t hit THIS year but it hit NEXT year, it would have still hit us on February 15th but instead of coming in over Russia, it would have come in over the UK and Ireland and would have entered the Earth’s atmosphere in fact entered the North Atlantic Ocean.23:55[Iain Stewart] In order for the meteorite to strike anywhere near Britain, our paths through space would have had to be fundamentally different.I think Alan was saying somewhat the opposite – in fact the asteroid would just have had to have been at a point along its orbit one sidereal year behind where it actually was. The Earth would then have rotated another 365.25 times lining up the trajectory with the North Atlantic. So the paths through space wouldn’t have to have been different – rather it’s the position of the asteroid along its orbit which would need to have been different.
Posted by James Lancashire at 14:34 on 2013 Mar 11
I missed this last week but looks like a decent prog if it’s up to usual Horizon standardshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r6dys
Posted by Paul A Brierley at 06:47 on 2013 Mar 08
Thank you.It would seem the Voyagers are, the most distant man-made object’s.
Posted by Graham Relf at 09:19 on 2013 Mar 07
The Pioneers stopped transmitting years ago but the Voyagers are still in contact. This page shows up-to-the-second distances: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/index.html
Posted by Richard Miles at 22:14 on 2013 Mar 06
On 2012 Sep 9, the probes were as follows:Probe, Distance from Sun (AU) / Rate of increase of distance (AU/yr)Pioneer 10, 106.7 / 2.54Pioneer 11, 86.4 / 2.40Voyager 1, 121.8 / 3.60Voyager 2, 99.5 / 3.26
Posted by Richard Miles at 23:48 on 2013 Feb 28
Has anyone heard if a Memorial Service for Sir Patrick is being planned?I thought this might have been on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of his birth but that is just 4 days away now.Richard Miles
Posted by Richard Miles at 23:32 on 2013 Feb 28
Nick,Very close-approaching asteroids are accelerated / gravity slingshot by the mass of the Earth and no ordinary planetary programme can deal with this without a dedicated fix for each object in question. You need to use precise obtain your local topocentric RA and Dec coordinates from websites such as can be found at:Minor Planet Center ephemeris serviceJPL HORIZONS Web-InterfaceNEODyS-2Bill,Have put in a couple of links to your YouTube video on the ARPS webpages. Let me have some details about your location/telescope/ camera used – nice animation I must say. Thanks.Richard Miles
Posted by Nick Atkinson at 19:50 on 2013 Feb 28
Hoping for clear skies but only to be disappointed I pointed my telescope at a predicted point on the trajectory.This has left me thinking about the ability of planetarium software to be able to do positional calculations rather than simply showing the trail. I use Carte Du Ceil and connect this to my mount allowing tracking on 500 minor planets. I notice that Stary Night Pro 6 can show the trajectory of 2012 DA 14 but cannot predict positions. Do you think there any of the sky charts out there that can do this?
Posted by Paul A Brierley at 06:32 on 2013 Feb 27
Thank you Richard.It is a shame, none off these stories have been re-printed.I have one of his stories. "Mission to Mars" which I found a jolly good read.
Posted by Richard Miles at 23:15 on 2013 Feb 26
Paul – I can’t see Kindle editions available for the early novels, etc. of Patrick. Amazon is not very proactive and even has yet to recognise that Patrick has finally left us. The UK is poorly served with Kindle editions of books: the U.S. has a much better deal in that they have many additional Kindle books than are available most other places.Richard
Posted by Chris Hooker at 13:03 on 2013 Feb 24
Charles Wood refers to this "ghost" crater in his book The Modern Moon, and he says it was named "Ancient Newton" by Johannes Schroter. However, he goes on to say there is no clear evidence that it is actually a buried crater on the floor of the Imbrium basin; it may just be a circumstantial combination of ridges, wrinkles and a few conveniently-placed peaks that our eyes interpret as a ring.Chris Hooker
Posted by Richard Miles at 15:07 on 2013 Feb 20
Hi David,I’m the same – I especially like to snap the thin crescent Moon to bring out the earthshine if it is in the sky at the start of an observing session.The image I took last Saturday is still on the observatory computer – will have to transfer it next time I power up the system.Richard
Posted by Bill Ward at 10:54 on 2013 Feb 20
Hi All,Here’s a time lapse I made of 2012DA14.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tLIrHYOLuUQUnfortunately the Youtube compression has "softened" the images, especially at the start when some cirrus cloud crossed the field of view.Cheers,Bill.
Posted by Callum Potter at 21:55 on 2013 Feb 18
Hi David,sorry, if you could email me the picture I will make sure it appears.Callum
Posted by Marlyn Smith at 19:57 on 2013 Feb 16
That’s an excellent sequence Peter, thanks for posting it.
Posted by D A Dunn at 15:07 on 2013 Feb 16
Callum,Sorry I wasn’t aware of the limitations. Here are a shot taken last night before the clouds rolled in. This is a raw shot. I have 13 of them which makes a nice mini video. It would be interesting to know if the parallax is measurable between shots taken here in Normandy and shots taken from the UK. I guess one could calculated the distance to the asteroid from the parallax angle.
All the bestDavid
