I saw an article over on Universe Today on the whole star naming scam. This has been one of my pet peeves for a long while - private companies conning you into thinking they're naming a star for you, when they have no such authority with which to do so. The article goes into how the International Astronomical Union is the only organisation who has any authority to name stars etc....
So a few days ago there were reports in the news of a gamma ray burst visible with the naked eye. Unfortunately I wasn't able to see it, I was clouded up pretty bad down here. Let me say that again, last week it was possible to see a gamma ray burst with the naked eye. This explosion was 7.5 BILLION light years away. To put that in perspective, the most distant object visible with the naked eye usually is the Andromeda galaxy at 2....
We desperately need the separation of church and state in this country. As I previously wrote about in January those indoctrinated into a religious ideology are up to their usual tricks trying to shoot down, or water down the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. I don't have time to go into all the details here, so I refer you to my previous post on the issue. We've got Des Browne, Ruth Kelly, and Paul Murphy all Roman Catholics blabbering on about saving embryos (read babies), I suppose secretly they all want to ban abortion as well, persecute homo-sexuals and stone to death anybody who tempts them to another god, or anybody who works on a Sunday (it's all in the good book)....
STS 122 launched yesterday on time (to my surprise after the weather forecast), and will, with the space station be visible over the UK. This evening (8th) the ISS will pass overhead at about 17:55 (and later at 19:25), and the space shuttle will probably be between 10 and 20 minutes behind it. Tomorrow (9th) the shuttle will be docking with the space station, I haven't been able to find out at what time, but if they haven't already docked by tomorrow evening they will be much closer in the sky, hopefully only a few seconds apart or less....
The left has taken a very anti-nuclear stance on how to develop Britain's electricity supply going forward. A lot of this comes from misconceptions about nuclear power. Typically when one mentions you're in favour of a new generation of nuclear power stations you're instantly met with some nonsense about 500,000 deaths thanks to Chernobyl. Firstly that argument is a complete non-sequitur. Modern reactors, and even Britain's existing nuclear reactors cannot fail in such a manner as one of the reactors at Chernobyl did in 1986....
So I've been playing through Crysis which is a fantastic game. But yesterday I noticed something, something BAD. WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? The Moon!!!!! Ahhh Jesus. For us to see the Earth facing side of the Moon completely illuminated, it must be opposite the Sun in the sky. In daytime like this picture shows it is impossible to have the Moon fully illuminated. In reality the Full Moon will be rising just as the Sun is setting and vice versa - opposite positions in the sky....
Thanks to faulty sensors in the external fuel tank the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis has been postponed again right back until the 2nd of January. It's mission is to carry the European Space Agency's Columbus lab to the International Space Station. However it, along with the Space Station will still be visible from the UK, the bad news is in the morning instead of the early evening. Unless of course it gets put back another three or four weeks....
Instead of doing what I normally do of posting with very little notice, I'm going to give some notice as these shuttle and space station flyovers seem pretty popular to readers of my blog. The Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch on the 6th of December, it'll be on a mission to the International Space Station carrying Europe's Columbus laboratory to the station. Like Endeavour's last mission back in August it will be visible from the UK in the evenings....
I just went out tonight (spotted a Leonid!) and noticed Comet Holmes has vanished, well it hasn't vanished it is still there but I couldn't make it out among the light pollution with just my eyes after a few minutes of dark adaption. I wouldn't call it an easy naked eye object anymore. Part of the trouble comes from its angular size, it spreads the light out over an area larger than the Moon which makes it difficult for our eyes to detect....
Saw this pop up on New Scientist... Should doctors assume that people are happy to donate their organs unless they make the effort to opt out? That's the scenario being considered in the UK, as a means of reducing the widening gap between supply and demand for donated organs. At the moment, a dead person's organs cannot be taken unless they registered themselves in life as a donor. "Around 8000 people in the UK need an organ transplant [each year], but only 3000 transplants are carried out,"...