Comments on: Astro quickies

By: Alice’s Astro Info

Alice’s Astro Info — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:20:11 +0000

[...] Tip o the video camera to Phil Plait! [...]

By: Alice

Alice — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:16:57 +0000

Wow. BBC – huh. Their date for that clip is November 08. Well, that video of me is from … either _early_ 2008 or back in 2007 … or was it before that? I don’t remember – it wasn’t the November 08 or the ephemeral “recent” one – I didn’t report on either of those, but my clip got picked up for the one in November.

Especially since I was in FLORIDA enjoying the SUN when this happened…

Though it wasn’t before May of 07, because that’s how long my hair’s been blue!

Yay for becoming international!

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:06:57 +0000

Jack C & Evolving Squid.

Also no prob, even though the CW is rusty as … erm … a very rusty thing.

de G0TSR 73

By: Romeo Vitelli

Romeo Vitelli — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:48:45 +0000

“A bright bolide was seen over the northwestern US the other day”

A likely story! Haven”t you ever seen Cloverfield?

By: quadrantid2

quadrantid2 — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:45:19 +0000

what is the name phenomena in which the object skimming the earth’s atmosphere is significantly larger than the standard “shooting star”? I saw what I thought was called a bolide, but now I am thinking differently. What I saw was a very large object that moved much slower than a shooting star, and I want to know what to call this type of object.

By: Supernova

Supernova — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:13:28 +0000

I couldn’t determine the date of the bolide event from that page/video either. I saw a bright meteor (from Denver, in the northern sky) on the night of Jan. 14th and was wondering if this was the same one…

By: Earth’s Twin (maybe) « If It Were Obvious

Earth’s Twin (maybe) « If It Were Obvious — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:22:35 +0000

[...] As with all science, new discoveries may be altered as more data comes in. Here is a word of warning on this one–read the comment from [...]

By: Fritriac

Fritriac — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:50:11 +0000

Saw #4 at spaceweather.com (archives, January 20th) first. Really a clever guy, but it seems that the work on the photo wasn’t only fun – from the article:

“This is actually a series of 28 separate exposures on one piece of film. The ‘dots’ are 30-second exposures; the ‘dashes’ are 3-minute exposures. The ‘shutter’ creating the gaps was my shivering, gloved hand held over the lens in the 0ÂºF Colorado air. The entire message required just under two hours to record. Every few minutes, I had to turn on a blow dryer to keep the frost from forming on the lens–and me!”

By: bigjohn756

bigjohn756 — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:27:14 +0000

What year is it? It’s written in the stars.

By: Tim Bennett

Tim Bennett — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:26:29 +0000

“Meteor spotted over US” – “Page last updated at 11:25 GMT, Sunday, 23 November 2008″

Are you sure that’s the correct video? Unless there was another bolide, that’s not ‘the other day’.

By: Evolving Squid

Evolving Squid — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:19:48 +0000

Long to send #4 with a key though… all those dashes.

de VE3OIJ (currently CG3OIJ for the event referred to in #4) 73

By: Cupcakus

Cupcakus — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:53:16 +0000

The sat pictures are creepy, from space millions of people look far too similar to what was growing on my 3 week old pasta I threw out last night.

By: Ian O'Neill

Ian O'Neill — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:05:18 +0000

Hey Phil

Thanks for picking up that Morse image from Astroengine – I was captivated by it myself! Really boosted my urge to actually do some practical astronomy, I’ve spent way too long reading the books

Cheers! Ian

By: JackC

JackC — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:54:42 +0000

No trouble with the Morse in #4 here.

de N4FFD, 73

By: jm

jm — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:39:02 +0000

about 2) , I got this curricular this morning clarifying the new estimations:

Dear All,
The New Scientist and perhaps other media outlets are reporting that the mass of MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb has been revised down to 1.5 Earth masses, but these reports are in error. The reporter has been confused by a report of one of my colleagues regarding a revision in the mass estimate that would be possible if the host star was confirmed to be a ~0.09 solar mass M-dwarf instead of a brown dwarf. The correct mass estimate remains 3.3 (+4.9 / – 1.8) Earth masses. This is currently the lowest mass estimate for an exoplanet except for PSR 1257+12 b, but the error bars have large overlap with a number of other planets detected by both radial velocities and microlensing.

- David Bennett, for the MOA, OGLE, and PLANET collaborations

List – http://listes.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/wws/info/exoplanets

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:34:08 +0000

1.4 Earthh mass – that was, quite suddenly, a close match! Raises expectations on future observations around red dwarfs, I presume.