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What is the most impressive astronomical object you've seen with your own eye through a telescope? For myself: I've seen Saturn through the old 36-incher refractor at Lick Observatory (it was a special night for the club I used to belong to) and you could clearly see the Cassini Division; and I've observed the Whirlpool Nebula through a 20-inch f/5.6 Newtonian where I could make out the connecting material between the two bright parts of the galaxy. But I think the most impressive was seeing the Ring Nebula through a Celestron 14 on Fremont Peak in California where I could actually see the central star. Amy

Taking a poll: What telescopes do you all use, how often do you use them, and do you do astrophotgraphy with your set-up?

At least so far so good... Repairs have been finished and Hubble has been released. News Conference tomorrow. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/science/space/20hubble.html?ref=science

I grabbed this off or Reuters today and thought some people might be interested. By Alexia Vlahos SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Scientists searching for a planet like Earth said on Tuesday they have found the smallest planet ever detected outside the solar system, less than twice the size of our own. The exoplanet, a planet that orbits a star beyond the solar system, is called Gliese 581e after the star it circles. Because of its relatively small size it is likely rocky, like Earth, as opposed to gas giants such as Jupiter or Saturn, the astronomers said. "It is the lightest planet detected outside the solar system so far," Dr. Gaspare Lo Curto, an astronomer at the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, told a news conference. "We are not too far away from finding a planet like Earth," he added. Gliese 581e orbits its star in just 3.15 days, but lies outside a so-called "habitable zone" and could not sustain life, Lo Curto said. Its mass is just 1.9 times that of Earth, and it is 20.5 light years away. But while the small planet is outside the habitable zone, the biggest of three other previously discovered planets in the same system appears to be inside this just-right zone. "The most outlying planet is inside what is defined as a habitable zone, which is a zone where there could be water in a liquid state on the surface of the planet," Lo Curto said. The international team of researchers used a 3.6 meter telescope at the Paranal Observatory in La Silla, 370 miles north of Chile's capital Santiago. Their findings are also being presented to an astronomical meeting this week in Britain. Around 340 exoplanets have so far been found orbiting other stars besides the Earth's sun, most of them gas giants with characteristics similar to Jupiter and Neptune. (Editing by Simon Gardner and Vicki Allen) © Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Hi everyone, thought this might interest you all.... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/opinion/14shostak.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

What is your favorite planet or moon?

I think aliens exist but i don't believe people who say that they seen aliens for example there are lot of people who say that they see ufo's but i don't believe that to me the space is to big for aliens to visit earth but I think they exist

Considering its ability to survive under extremely hostile conditions by comparison to other organisms, is it safe to assume that the conditions, although imperative for its survival, also hinder its continued evolution?If that is the case then do you think it's possible to predict the maximum tolerances for any life form to exist, since prior to the discovery of an extremophile scientists always thought it impossible to sustain life under such conditions.Finally, would it be possible to replicate the success of an extremophile in a rat by injecting the same science into its skin so that it is able to survive in temperatures above 200 Celsius for example?

Hi guys, I've been reading your posts on all sorts of things and it seems that I have joined a group with pretty good knowledge on all sorts of topics. Pleasant change! Here is my question According to special relativity, which deals with uniform motion ( yes, I know it can deal with accelearation but uniform motion is what I want to talk about here) states that person "A" can consider himself a rest with respect to person "B" and person "B" can consider himself at rest with respect to person "A" as long as they stay in uniform motion. If A and B have identical light clocks and are separated by some distance, say A in space and B on the Earth, and A is traveling at a uniform speed, then B, on the Earth, could say that it is he who is moving and not A. OK so far so good? Lets say that A is moving at some speed with respect to B. B now measures the rate at which A's clock is now "ticking" he finds that it has slowed down with respect to his own identical clock. (If you decided to input any speed into the equations it will not matter what speed you input, as long as it is less than the speed of light.) So lets say that B finds out that A's clock is half as slow as his own clock. This would then be an indication of time dilation. BUT, lets now say that A decided to say that it was he who is at rest with respect to B and decides to measure B's clock with respect to his own. He finds that B's clock is "ticking" half as slow as his own clock! As far as I can tell both clocks are "ticking" at the same rate. If this is true that both clocks are ticking at the same rate then where is the time dilation? If you need me to rephrase anything just let me know. Thanks for reading. Red

Added more to the Nebulae albums. 120 total pictures with correct captions.

Greetings, fellow Astronomers! We got another team match challenge from the Fast Players Group. Here is a link if you want to join up: http://www.chess.com/groups/team_match.html?id=1744 George

Well, I've been campaigning for "Best Group Manager of the Year" for many months now, but since Chesskween has thrown her hat into the mix, I haven't been able to post a single comment anywhere. I'd feel too guilty competing against her. So I'm switching my campaign to "Member of the Year" since it's the only other one that I'm in contention for (although I was a lot closer in the other one). Good Luck Jane. I'll tell people to vote for you. I hope you do the same for me. Click here to vote on Chess.com Site Trophies go to page 3 Please vote: Best Group Manager of the Year - Chesskween Most Enthusiastic Beginner of the Year - Melanerz Chess.com Member of the Year - Billium248 Thank You.

Hi, I'm new to this group. Are there any other heretics out there? Like, no Higg's Boson and no big bang? The universe is not expanding, your mind is shrinking? Anybody?

Hi everyone, Thought this might be of interest: www.heavens-above.com

Through I-Tunes I found some great astronomy podcasts for beginners and experts alike. Thoroughly enjoying this lecture series: www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/index.html www.astronomycast.com Any one know of any more podcasts? Cap 42°43'59.73"N 88°13'42.20"W 193 meters MSL

Hello, if anyone is interested in joining a group that will play in the chess world league tournament here on Chess.com who live in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, or Alabama, please join this group http://www.chess.com/groups/home/usa-south-central-group or contact me please. Thanks and good luck to all!

Below are the game parameters: GAME DETAILS Time Control: 1 day Players: 1-5 Rating Range: 1600 - 2000 Rated Games: Yes Auto Start: No Concurrent Games: 1 So, I guess if there is an interest among those of you rated 1600 - 2000, and are willing to play a 24 hour per turn game, let us know and we can decide whether or not to accept. Thanks, George

Greetings, fellow Amateur Astronomers! We are starting up a team match against The Power of Chess group. Anybody else want to join? Here is a url to the match page (sorry, I haven't figured out how to make a link): http://www.chess.com/groups/team_match.html?id=544 Thanks, George

Images captured of 4 planets outside solar system By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Fri Nov 14, 8:45 am ET Reuters – This image taken aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in 2006 shows the newly discovered planet, … Slideshow: Hubble & Spitzer Space Telescopes WASHINGTON – Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away — three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star. None of the four giant gaseous planets are remotely habitable or remotely like Earth. But they raise the possibility of others more hospitable. It's only a matter of time before "we get a dot that's blue and Earthlike," said astronomer Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He led one of the two teams of photographers. "It is a step on that road to understand if there are other planets like Earth and potentially life out there," he said. Macintosh's team used two ground-based telescopes, while the second team relied on photos from the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope to gather images of the exoplanets — planets that don't circle our sun. The research from both teams was published in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science. In the past 13 years, scientists have discovered more than 300 planets outside our solar system, but they have done so indirectly, by measuring changes in gravity, speed or light around stars. NASA's space sciences chief Ed Weiler said the actual photos are important. He compared it to a hunt for elusive elephants: "For years we've been hearing the elephants, finding the tracks, seeing the trees knocked down by them, but we've never been able to snap a picture. Now we have a picture." In a news conference Thursday, Weiler said this fulfills the last of the major goals that NASA had for the Hubble telescope before it launched in 1990: "This is an 18 1/2-year dream come true." There are disputes about whether these are the first exoplanet photos. Others have made earlier claims, but those pictures haven't been confirmed as planets or universally accepted yet. The photos released Thursday are being published in a scientifically prominent journal, but that still hasn't convinced all the experts. Alan Boss, an exoplanet expert at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Harvard exoplanet hunter Lisa Kaltenegger both said more study is needed to confirm these photos are proven planets and not just brown dwarf stars. MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager, at the NASA press conference, said earlier planetary claims "are in a gray area." But these discoveries, "everybody would agree is a planet," said Seager, who was not part of either planet-finding team. The Hubble team this spring compared a 2006 photo to one of the same body taken by Hubble in 2004. The scientists used that to show that the object orbited a star and was part of a massive red dust ring which is usually associated with planets — making it less likely to be a dwarf star. Macintosh's team used ground-based telescopes to spot three other planets orbiting a different star. That makes it less likely they are a pack of brown dwarf stars. The planet discovered by Hubble is one of the smallest exoplanets found yet. It's somewhere between the size of Neptune and three times bigger than Jupiter. And it may have a Saturn-like ring. It circles the star Fomalhaut, pronounced FUM-al-HUT, which is Arabic for "mouth of the fish." It's in the constellation Piscis Austrinus and is relatively close by — a mere 148 trillion miles away, practically a next-door neighbor by galactic standards. The planet's temperature is around 260 degrees, but that's cool by comparison to other exoplanets. The planet is only about 200 million years old, a baby compared to the more than 4 billion-year-old planets in our solar system. That's important to astronomers because they can study what Earth and planets in our solar system may have been like in their infancy, said Paul Kalas at the University of California, Berkeley. Kalas led the team using Hubble to discover Fomalhaut's planet. One big reason the picture looks fuzzy is that the star Fomalhaut is 100 million times brighter than its planet. The team led by Macintosh at Lawrence Livermore found its planets a little earlier, spotting the first one in 2007, but taking extra time to confirm the trio of planets circling a star in the Pegasus constellation. The star is about 767 trillion miles away, but visible with binoculars. It's called HR 8799, and the three planets orbiting it are seven to 10 times larger than Jupiter, Macintosh said. "I've been doing this for eight years and after eight years we get three at once," he said. ___

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/23/scidarkmatter123.xmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/23/scidark123.xmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/09/13/scidark113.xmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/05/15/nhubble115.xmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2005/04/27/ecquest27.xmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/05/scidark105.xmland perhaps most convincinghttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/digitallife/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2003/08/12/ecfdark13.xml