*sigh* - should've never made past the editors desk...

CNN reporting on a halo around the sun: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/07/suns-...-pretty/?hpt=T3

To modify an old adage about man bites dog:
"A ring around the sun as seen from Earth is not news, but a ring around the Earth as seen from the sun is news."

--- Full quote of previous post removed! Mod. ---

The comments submitted in response are very interesting and adds to the poor astronomy ideas.

The "orbit" thing reminds me of how one of my elementary teachers tried to convey the idea of planetary orbits and why planets farther from the sun take longer to orbit. She had someone stand in place as the "sun", then a row of students walked around the "sun" at a fixed distance, point being that the further away from the sun, the longer the orbital distance, so it took longer to cover it at the same pace. This was during the era of Apollo landings on the moon, so relevant to interests at the time. No mention of the inverse square law ... probably for the best.

Was it Carl Sagan who commented that the average speed of a comet in the Ooort Cloud was about that of a race car? It's interesting to compare that to the maximum orbital velocity of Mercurcy of 59 km/sec (about 132,000 miles/hr)--a difference of three orders of magnitude!
Tom

If you thought that any of the previously mentioned stories were bad, then take a look at this.
Admittedly it was in the 'Wacky News' section but really?!

From: DailyTelegraph
May 12, 2010
It left Earth 33 years ago, now it's claimed the Voyager 2 spacecraft may have been hijacked by aliens after sending back data messages NASA scientists can't decode.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/wack...0-1225865566982

There was a famous X-Files (season 2, episode 1) episode called "Little Green Men" that did have a similar story line
to this report in the Telegraph. The X-Files show aired in 1995.

Forgive me for this one but Emily Lakdawalla made newspaper & online news as she " photoshopped a NASA image to hide evidence of Aliens ".
Some journalists noticed that a NASA Cassini photo was "photoshopped" and jumped to crazy conclusions...

Normally UMSF-unworth topic but as Emily was involved
http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/961/Wetenschap/ar...universum.dhtml

We all know Doug did an excellent job explaining the "Gorilla on Mars" foto but there's obvious plenty to do for debunkers of pseudo-science!

Oh dear...

This is so nuts that it doesn't deserve any more of a response than the one Emily gave them. If other media outlets pick it up, then maybe someone can start directing the media to the raw images. Other than that they've already gotten way more attention than they deserve.

I seems to me that this is an example of the media helping! The media outlet in this case is exposing crazy internet talk and giving those in the know (Emily) a platform to correct the misconceptions.

It's on Fox News and Gizmodo now.

I thought Gizmodo were better than this

Man...this is nothing more than cheap sensationalism designed to draw an audience, common sense & rational explanations be damned.

Better stop typing now before all the words only have four letters.

The Guardian (bless 'em!) had a report this weekend on long-range surveillance photography carried out in the US. Some of the photos - toxic sites, chemical weapons' sites, nefarious transfers of assorted people at airports-in-deserts - were rather fascinating, taken at ranges of many miles on huge lenses, but the one of "four geostationary spy satellites" showing their trails across the night sky would have been laughable, if it were not such bad science.

Andy

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90...81/7174741.html


One hardly knows where to begin with this one! I like the new name for the Phobos Sample Return Mission, "Forbes".

Yes, I know, translation is always a problem. But still...

Phil

Wow.

Maybe they're angling for a sponsorship deal.

Click to view attachment

It wouldn't surprise me if the photos and science results are already available online if you know where to look.

I like how they call it a rover even though they say it will be orbiting. I'm pretty sure I've seen Phoenix called a rover too -- is everything that goes to Mars a rover according to the media?

Haven't you heard of the MRO (Mars Rover Orbiter)?

p.s. At least Phoenix had feet (if not wheels) on the ground.

space.com article: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/cassi...yby-101105.html



Oh. So it won't be flying past Titan then?

Surely it will still be flying past Titan, just not running through planned list of "things to do" while in the neighbourhood, or have I completely misunderstood the orbital mechanics...

Edited - D'oh, not looking at where this was posted. Leaving it in to hang my own head in shame for even briefly thinking anyone here would be so clueless.

I thought the BBC Horizon programme entitled "Asteroids: the good, the bad and the ugly" was rather well done. I watched it on i-Player in the early hours of the morning when my broadband speed manages to top 0.7 Mb. It was sufficiently enthralling to keep me watching and the facts they presented were essentially correct.

Richard Miles

The BBC - dis'n the Rovers again!!!
"While the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity provided far more data than was initially planned, as vehicles that are powered by the sun and get around on wheels, they are limited in their overall range of exploration. For example, the Opportunity rover, which has been on the Martian surface for nearly seven years, passed the 25-kilometre mark this week."


huh?!

I don't think so. I think they're only making the point that ambitions for future missions are set even higher, as they should be.

well solar power is doing good for a 90 day mission that is now into 7 years

but , come on now, a atomic rocket
it is one thing to use a thermal nuclear thermocouple power source like the old "snap 19"

but a rocket ???? using low yield isotopes ???

ok lets do it "right" put into space a nice plutonium powered mars "hopper " , a small and very nasty bit on the surface jumping up and down and NEVER crashing -- right.

Actually, the per-sol driving distance for MSL isn't significantly different to MER.

Hmmm. The piece has been tweaked. Maybe someone dropped Mr Palmer a note suggesting he give more credit to the Mars rovers.

(whistles innocently)

And oppy has long since passed the overall driving distance goal for MSL: level 1 requirement is 20km. See e.g. http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/pages/ima...s1%20Li-MSL.pdf. For that matter, MSL level 1 longevity requirement is only one year. The success of the MER rovers is mind-blowing.

Inconceivable.

Stu, I wonder if those "innocent whistles" sound like stinging attacks to a journalist?!

And yet, it happened.

Princess Bride, 1987. Do I win a prize?

Andy

Andy - funniest comment in ages. Excellent.

Just as a counterpoint to this thread, here's a refreshingly accurate & informative pop article about the upcoming Geminids & lunar eclipse from space.com...BUT picked up by the Yahoo newsfeed.

Kinda gives me hope.

From the BBC....
"The Geminids consist of tiny particles ranging in size from a grain of sand to a pea shed by 3200 Phaethon, an object thought to be an extinct comet."

If only they would check thier facts before publishing.....shame. For those that don't know, it's an extint asteroid not comet.

This abstract sheds some light on what Phaeton is, calling it a 'rock comet':
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2710

Isn't 'extinct asteroid' an oxymoron anyway?

I think "extinct comet" is more apropos, since it implies the presence of volatiles...but, who's to say, really.

As usual, nature doesn't design objects to fit neat human classifications; everything exists along a continuum.

From News.com.au, something I sincerely hope turns out to be another web hoax:

Tatooine's twin suns - coming to a planet near you just as soon as Betelgeuse explodes



Tatooine's twin suns - coming to a planet near you just as soon as Betelgeuse explodes, News.com.au 19/01/2011

After the attention grabbing opener, they go on to say "The bad news is, it could also happen in a million years. But who's counting?"

It actually looks like an informative article.

It's catastrophically misleading. It wouldn't be a 'new sun' - it would be a very very very bright star. Citing 2012 is just tabloid sensationalism,

"When this happens a giant explosion will occur, tens of millions of times brighter than the sun." - and it's hundreds of millions of times further away.


Sorry - there's so much sensationalist garbage in that - I don't think Joe Public is going to come out the other end 'informed'.

Oh where to begin????

This gem is certainly worth noting.

It's just a fluff article, with some errors made worse by conclusions that are overly dramatic. It's nice to see that someone wants to write about a really interesting stellar object in the popular media, just a bit unfortunate that they've failed to check the facts and then couldn't help jumping in with some awful 2012 Armageddon references and overly melodramatic opinions.

The absolute magnitude of the Betelgeuse Type II supernova whenever it happens will be around -18 which makes for an apparent magnitude of around -11 here on earth (taking the absolute magnitude of Betelgeuse to be -6 and it's current apparent magnitude as somewhere between 0.2 and 1.2) . That's about midway between the brightest Iridium flares and a Full Moon, very bright as a night sky object but not a "second sun".

If only more hacks were prepared to say this (or make the call in the first place...)

i like this part


well at 1300 ly those alpha particles will not have "too much" of an impact ( now at 130 ly or 13 ly that would be different )
and the neutrinos ( what i think Connelly means )well ,will do what ever they do

I am really looking forward to 2013...

Not strictly astronomy...



And the first comment advises people to "...Google NASA Mooned America... "

Getting Messenger probe into Mercury's orbit is like a giant game of billiard balls, says scientist

Nice pic...

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/836661-mars-si...old-buried-life

I've noticed that with this new global information age there has been a lot of cross-cultural exchange of slang and regional expressions, especially between the U.S., The U.K., and Down Under. I'm not sure though that "boffins" is ever going to catch on over here. Unless of course someone creates a children's cartoon about "The Boffins" who are a race of really smart Hobbits, and sells the inevitable stuffed toys that make great cuddly Christmas gifts.

I always thought "boffin" was always intended as a slightly derogatory term.