saac

Simply beautiful - I think you have the colour balance spot on it looks very natural. 

Jim

2 minutes ago, maw lod qan said:

I'm certain what ever this "amazing discovery" is, they could go ahead and tell us now!

Why make us wait?? 😖😖

In these media saturated days the "standby for an important announcement" is a way to maximise publicity for your message.  I wonder if it will be confirmation of significant water deposits - good news  - but oh so much better if were discovery of a Clanger civilisation  

Jim

Just a word of caution that the further you go with investigation/disassembly you may be weakening your case should you appeal against the delivery company.  Your solar image looks fine, although hard to judge focus.  I wonder if it is just the dew shield which has been knocked out of alignment. Good luck with it Shaun, it looks otherwise to be a fine refractor. 

Jim 

1 hour ago, City9Town0 said:

Plenty of Administratium about...

or Bureaucratium  - I love this explanation of it's negative half life from wikipedia

" A commonly heard description describes it as "having a negative half-life". In other words, the more time passes, the more massive "Bureaucratium" becomes; it only grows larger and more sluggish."

Jim 

3 hours ago, andrew s said:

Not all of it 😉 Regards Andrew 

Still looking for unobtanium , I am sure it will turn up.  

Jim 

43 minutes ago, Drifter said:

Er ... Yes, ... and Earth scientist's Periodic Table might not be the same as Extra-terrestrial scientist's Periodic Tables elsewhere in the possible Universe ... ahem.

Oh I doubt that very much given what the periodic table represents     But you never know maybe our extra terrestrial scientists have indeed found  the island of stability and are awash with super heavy nuclei.  

16 hours ago, Waddensky said:

I watched the episode linked in the first post. It basically says that the building blocks of life are found in the solar system,

That will be the Periodic Table then !

Jim 

What good fortune   -  well that's ok you can now press ahead and buy the Esprit   

jim 

You may be better using a web cam. They may even be of similar specifications !  

Jim 

57 minutes ago, omo said:

Going to need some major redevelopment of the roads to get moderately sized rockets up there, a lot of it is gnarley single track

Then its the tourists that will follow for the monthly launches.  Look what has happened to Skye, Loch Lomond, North Coast 500 route  which all now suffer from massive over tourism. To build the infrastructure to properly cope with the volume of people they encourage simply destroys the thing they came to see in the first place. Scotland is too small and the environment to precious to be played around with like this.  But hey I suppose humanity simply cannot survive without more geo mapping sats and wifi on the go so we need low earth orbit cube sats launched every month.  Why cant they launch them from a barge out in the Atlantic!  

Jim 

On 09/10/2020 at 15:18, Ships and Stars said:

North Uist was one of the short-listed sites for this spaceport. I have to say I'm very relieved it's not going there for a number of reasons, but now it's well on its way to being fully approved for a remote part of Sutherland. Mixed feelings and probably more than a few arguments from the 59 crofters who own the entire peninsula as a single managed estate I believe. The for camp says money is needed and the population is dwindling, the against camp is obviously concerned about the permanent and substantial change to the landscape and way of life, 

Probably the last of their current concerns, but the location is bang in the middle of the darkest area of night skies in mainland Britain... I hope they switch the lights off between launches. The proposed maximum is 12 launches a year.

A pristine area, and I often get the distinct feeling we're running out of space here on terra firma.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/09/remote-scottish-peninsula-could-be-host-to-spaceport-two-years-mhoine-peninsula-in-sutherland

 

 

 

"Money is needed and the population is dwindling"   I always find these arguments somewhat specious - if the population is dwindling then exactly who is needing the money and who will benefit !  The same arguments were used when they build the funicular on Cairngorm giving casual access to what was then one of the few  truly "wilderness " areas in Europe - the Cairngorm plateau.  We really are ripping up wilderness at an astonishing rate , the planet has given us enough warnings.   This need for year on year capital growth as the number one metric for measuring success has to stop.   I am with the no camp if you hadn't guessed.  Where is Joni Mitchell and her big yellow taxi when you need her . 

Jim 

Ben it may be worthwhile searching the UK ATC vacancy listings; similarly some universities recruit into non Phd/research positions in their Physics/Astronomy departments (St Andrews University being one I know  to do so).    Did your university or at least university department not offer career events ?  Most university departments have industrial contacts and offer career events which are generally a good starting point. 

https://www.technologysi.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/United-Kingdom-Astronomy-Technology-Centre.aspx

Jim 

50 minutes ago, Dantooine said:

I’d be off that ladder in under 30 seconds. 

Let gravity do the work and you would make it in 0.86 seconds or thereabout  

Jim

Can't help but think that this news broke rather quietly maybe caught in the glare of more pressing concerns of the pandemic.  It would be ironic if life is eventually confirmed how it was first hinted at under the radar so to speak.  Certainly a story to follow. 

Jim 

Here you go , no guarantee it is technically correct but it is how I visualise what is happening.  Happy for it to be corrected. 

Jim 

Im pretty sure something along these lines was discussed a few months ago.  Here is my take on it . The model of the gravity well would still hold and account for the tidal friction experienced by Io.  Think of a cube of Io, 1km by 1km by 1km.   The end of the cube reaching down deeper into the gravity well will experience a greater acceleration due to the increased warping of space than the end further up , in the shallow end so to speak.  So this km long wedge of Io will experience a differential acceleration along its length  - this affects every single atom so oriented along the wedge.  As Io rotates  in orbit it will experience the changing profile of the gravity well, in simple terms stretching and relaxing and hence it will be be subject to tidal forces and subsequent heating .  Not the best description without a diagram perhaps!

Jim

ps Andrew said what I was thinking in fewer words  

Nicely done, thanks for sharing the file. 

Jim 

They do look cool, I may get a set for the classroom.  Thanks for sharing  spikkyboy.   

Jim 

2 hours ago, jambouk said:

My friendly garage had some old disc brakes but they have a gap between the two halves; photo of one disc below. It already has central holes which I could pass threaded bar through from the pier, but then I’d need to drill through the disc itself to pass M18 bolts through to the disc above. Are these suitable?

 

 

No reason why the vented discs would not work assuming you can easily drill suitable sized/spaced holes. The garage should have a ready supply of the unvented discs which would give a neater finish.

Jim 

57 minutes ago, Paul M said:

I really need to start reading again, I used to love learning (and sharing) these kinds of unexpected facts.

As a boy I enjoyed reading Asimov's Guide to Science and Children of The Universe (H. von Ditfurth). They introduced me to just how wonderful science is and how it can be described in layman's terms.

You're not alone Paul - I don't read enough either - life just seems to get in the way.  It's one of the things that I'm looking forward to in retirement; I have a stack of books to get through. 

Jim 

2 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Yes most are called CMB 😜 

It's also why the matter excess (over anti matter) is only 1 part in 10^10 the balance annihilating into the photons of the CMB.

Regards Andrew 

PS I was that child.

Oh good answer Andrew I'm making a note of that one for future use.      Lucie Green's book  "15 Million Degrees A Journey To The Centre Of The Sun"  is full of fascinating facts and explanations of the amazing processes that go on in the Sun.    In one section she describes the amount of energy liberated in one proton-proton chain reaction as 40000 billionths of a joule.  The implication she is making being clear, that it is the sheer number  of these reactions that take place every second that power the sun - pointing to the unimaginable conversion of mass per second.  She goes on  to describe that "if you could scoop up a coffee cup amount of the material at the core - they would release just 4 thousands of a joule  - equivalent to eating 100 grams of corn chips over 16 years ! ".  Gram for gram we create more energy from our food than the sun does from its nuclear reactions !   It is a very readable book and would highly recommend it to anybody interested in stellar physics without requiring a phd to get past the foreword  . 

Jim 

1 hour ago, andrew s said:

Another fact to ponder is there are about 10^10 photons for each baryon (protons, neutrons mainly) in the observable universe!

Regards Andrew 

That is impressive, but I can already hear the wise crack from the back of the class "can you name them ?"  

Jim 

On 14/09/2020 at 22:07, tooth_dr said:

Wow, I'm really impressed, both good, but the second one really is something else!

Agreed that second image is outstanding . 

Jim 

Looking really smart Mark , good luck with first light with it.

Jim 

The hole at the bottom of the pier shown in Kev's drawing is another good idea worth considering - it can be useful for running cables inside the pier keeping them hidden.

Sorry Kev I didn't see your post before uploading my last;  our piers are very similar in construction but you were better at haggling than me, that is really good price you got it for   

Jim