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Posted on: My recent absence.
at 11/25/2009 8:02pm

Thanks silylene, it's great to be back.

Hi everyone,

I should be back properly very soon & am hoping to start ... more(+)

Thanks silylene, it's great to be back.

Hi everyone,

I should be back properly very soon & am hoping to start doing the images, that seem to earn a lot of respect in ernest soon. It's just that I have been too mentally exhausted to concentrate on doing them as they require concentration to do properly.

Also I am hoping to come to Canaveral for the STS 132 Atlantis launch in early May. Perhaps I could meet some SDC members there & will be my first ever visit to the USA, but my plans for this are tentative as awaiting to see how my health develops first.

Andrew Brown. close(-)

Posted on: Looking to buy your first telescope? Read This!
at 11/25/2009 7:50pm

Wise choice.

A word of warning to potenmtial telescope buyers who do not have deep pockets.

Many stores may sell ... more(+)

GalaxyFunGirl wrote:...Thank you for the informative thread, I plan on buying a new telescope by the end of the year........I will probably purchase it from Orion Telescope Company........

Wise choice.

A word of warning to potenmtial telescope buyers who do not have deep pockets.

Many stores may sell cheap, substandard telescopes which can seriously disappoint a budding Astronomer & put them off observing. Here in the UK some years ago, a certain catalogue store that is to be seen in practically every British town centre (my home town has two of them), sold a cheap budget telescope that on the packaging boasted, that you could 'observe Jupiter's moons one with volcanoes erupting, referring to Io) & that you could see stars with planets around them & that many wonders of the Universe were visible as galaxies sped away from each other. I demanded to see the instruction booklet & it was full of Voyager spacecraft & Hubble Space Telescope images, insinuating that with the telescope that is what you would see. There was never any mention that these were NASA images.

I was one person who complained about the false advertising & presentation of this telescope & indeed many astronomers & science proffessionals took the store to court under the trade descriptions act (I provided some evidence concerning the booklet that came with it) & we won. The product was withdrawn & could only be sold if it was presented as the useless piece of cheap tat that it was. A £20 telescope surpassing Hubble. It was a scam.

So please be very careful about choosing equipment. With Orion Optics, there will be no issues though, as they produce outstanding equipment & they never make false claims.

Andrew Brown. close(-)

Posted on: Risky asteroid 2009 WM1
at 11/25/2009 7:31pm

Very big welcome to SDC bigbadbenny.

There is a huge amount of knowledge & experience on these forums. What I ... more(+)

Very big welcome to SDC bigbadbenny.

There is a huge amount of knowledge & experience on these forums. What I would say, is that please look through the forums to see if a topic of what you are interested has already been started elsewhere & that all posts are relevant to the topic at hand.

We hope you stay & indeed learn a great deal.

Look through this particular thread to get a better understanding of the potential threat posed by a particular tiny Earth crosser asteroid 2009 WM1, that may or may not hit Earth, in all probability it will not & this thread is a great one for you to learn more about the potential threats posed by asteroids passing close to the Earth.

Andrew Brown. close(-)

Posted on: Cassini Equinox Mission (Cassini's two year extens...
at 11/25/2009 7:12pm

Immediately following on from the Enceladus encounter, Cassini focussed on Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, a ... more(+)

Immediately following on from the Enceladus encounter, Cassini focussed on Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, a gigantic 1,528 kilometre wide ball of undifferentiated ice & rock.

Cassini focussed on the equatorial region of this large moon to look for evidence that Rhea may either still have or have had rings of its own & the possibilty that Rhea may even have had it's own familly of small moons in it's youth that have since impacted the surface.

My enlarged, sharpened view of the crescent Rhea on Saturday 21st November 2009.


My enlarged, sharpened crop of an equatorial impact crater on Rhea, approx 60 KM across, when Cassini was 24,444 KM from the large icy moon. Note the many north - south running thrust faults. IIRC the first seen on Rhea.


It is great to be back doing this stuff again.

Andrew Brown. close(-)

Commented on: First Rocky World Confirmed Around Another Star
at 2009-09-16 19:19:00

Hi 70VirginisB.

You could well be correct.

If the orbit of this planet is even slightly eccentric, the flexing ... more(+)

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Commented on: New Map Reveals Geology of Jupiter's Moon Ganymede
at 2009-09-16 03:37:00

So do I Joshua,

I absolutely love this sort of thing. I have written some of my own thoughts on this on a later ... more(+)

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Commented on: New Map Reveals Geology of Jupiter's Moon Ganymede
at 2009-09-16 03:35:07

This is fascinating, fascinating stuff.

It is quite something that we have enough detailed information on Ganymede ... more(+)

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Commented on: Gotcha! Jupiter Turned Comet into a Moon
at 2009-09-14 18:43:51

This strengthens the case that many of Jupiter's outlier moons particularly those in the our retrograde group like ... more(+)

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Commented on: UFOlogy: Aliens and Hucksters Among Us
at 2009-09-14 08:28:08

I take it there's nothing of value to report on today then????

Andrew Brown.