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The TWP Astronomy Thread


Bhang Bhang Duc

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If you look in the upper centre-right of the photo you can see that white line, could be a shooting star, or a plane, or possibly a satellite, although I bet the exposure time for the photo would have seen a much longer line if it was a sat, and if it was a plane, I think it would be intermittent due to the blinking navigation lights.

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If you look in the upper centre-right of the photo you can see that white line, could be a shooting star, or a plane, or possibly a satellite, although I bet the exposure time for the photo would have seen a much longer line if it was a sat, and if it was a plane, I think it would be intermittent due to the blinking navigation lights.

 

Satellites can appear to "blink" in long-exposure photos - their brightness isn't constant from a fixed point on the ground.

 

Used to love observing the SMC with my telescope - the bright globuar cluster 47 Tucanae was in the same field of view.  Wonderful.

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  • 2 months later...

As Neil deGrasse says

“The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle,” Tyson explained. “Sometimes it’s closer, sometimes it’s farther away. Every month, there is a moment when it is closest. Occasionally, that moment when it is closest coincidences with a full moon. People are calling that a super moon, but there’s super half moons. Every month one of those phases is the closest. I don’t hear people saying like ‘super crescent, super half moon.’”

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Actually when most people say supermoon, they mean the mythical thing that gets passed around facebook all the time.  I got so tired of pasting links to explain the reality and telling people it's not what they think, that I just ignore the posts about it now.  You would think that after so many hoaxes about it, people might start thinking it strange that no one has seen one of these enormous moons before.  Or the companion hoax that says Mars will appear the same size as the moon.

 

Makes me want to facepalm hard enough to see stars...

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Actually when most people say supermoon, they mean the mythical thing that gets passed around facebook all the time.  I got so tired of pasting links to explain the reality and telling people it's not what they think, that I just ignore the posts about it now.  You would think that after so many hoaxes about it, people might start thinking it strange that no one has seen one of these enormous moons before.  Or the companion hoax that says Mars will appear the same size as the moon.

 

Makes me want to facepalm hard enough to see stars...

Basically this. As I had explained to several people in RL, if you want to see the moon bigger, go to a beach and catch the moon rise or the moon down...The "super" moon we had can still be seen through the hole on a straw and while I love astronomical observation and people getting connected to it, I also think they should know the right non-mythical non-magical non-made-up facts

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