Comments on: Unlocking the Jewel Box

By: David

David — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:35:31 +0000

Does anyone have a definitive say on what the relative views of the two article pix are? Are they more or less the same view, with the wider angle shot being rotated a little counter-clockwise?

By: Jewel

Jewel — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:41:46 +0000

Stunning pics. Simply stunning.

By: toasterhead

toasterhead — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:04:03 +0000

23. Astrofiend Says:

In theory then, it may be possible to, knowing the Sun’s composition in detail, find other stars born with it based on their age and spectroscopic signatures. These stars, although scattered throughout the galaxy, should roughly maintain some elements of their orbit, so we can narrow down where to search somewhat. There are astronomers working on this very problem as we speak!
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Perhaps I’m jumping a few steps ahead, but wouldn’t these also be good candidates for habitable planets? If they formed around the same time as the Sun and have roughly the same composition, it would seem to follow that they’d have the same proportions of rocky planets and gas giants that we have, plus more than enough time for life to form.

By: Abbey

Abbey — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:01:50 +0000

I am always and forever awed by looking up at night and seeing the wonderous things floating out there with us. But sometimes on a really bad day (I am disabled with chronic pain that means a life of morphine until someone comes up with a bionic spine. Anyone have any news on that front, by chance?), I forget the awe and the joy to be found within it.

Thank you for the picture of the pretty and for reminding me to look up.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:27:09 +0000

Pretty

By: toasterhead

toasterhead — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:58:58 +0000

So, please toasterhead, those age estimates have me quite puzzled – could you kindly clear up my confusion here and tell me where you got the figures from & check again that they’re accurate? Because to me they just don’t add up – at least not for the two red dwrafs ?

I got the information from the Wikipedia pages for all the local stars. It’s entirely possible that Wiki is wrong and/or I misread the numbers – both of which are easily corrected. But if Barnard’s Star and Wolf 359 are indeed geriatric instead of infants, it still backs up my main point which is that our stellar neighbors are mostly not close to the age of Sol and thus wouldn’t have been part of a cluster with it. What I was really trying to understand is whether or not a cluster’s children would disperse over 4.6 billion years, which Woof and Astrofiend answered.

Though now I’m curious about your answer for Sirius – are we certain that A and B formed at the same time? If stars are as mobile as some of the posters here are saying, couldn’t the pup be a captured dwarf that formed in a different place and time? Or at least a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation product gone horribly wrong?

By: bassmanpete

bassmanpete — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:53:45 +0000

a but over 300 million

Spectroscope, do I detect a New Zealand accent there?

vaccinefree, what you have to realise is that, in many cases, the people/companies promoting anti-vax are trying to do exactly the same as the pharmaceutical companies – sell their products. The big difference (besides the fact that most of the products don’t work!) is that their R & D costs are much smaller.