Stargazing Live on BBC2 8pm

[beanzontoast]

If that really happened on camera, amazingly lucky 'catch'! Meteors are quite common and quite easy to observe, but notoriously hard to photograph. I often wonder how much trouble Steven Spielberg went to, to capture his famous 'trademark' meteors in some of his movies. Of the two celebrated apparitions in Jaws, which seem to be in daylight, one was faked and one was the real thing, according to the blurb. If that's true, I wonder how long Spielberg left the cameras running, to catch it. And was it really in 'daylight'?

I'd have put it in the 'bigger than a grain of sand' category. Decently bright trail. Maybe they'll mention it again tonight now they've had time to think about it.

 

[beanzontoast]

Just a few hundred yards down the road from me is the Coddenham Observatory run by archetypal amateur Tom Boles, who has discovered more supernovae than anyone else in the world. Worth looking at his website.

Gordon

The devotion to the task of searching and the patience it must require is amazing. It proves the old addage that amateurs can still contribute to front-line astronomy, even in a world where space telescopes make the headlines most of the time.

 

[ianrauk]

They have just shown a pic of a meteor crater in Arizona.
I visited it in 2009 and it's an amazing place. HUGE!!

 

[beanzontoast]

Loved the bit last night where Dara showed an astronomical photo he'd taken using a remote telescope and he had tagged it at the bottom with his name and "aged 38" at the end!

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

I enjoyed the bit where Cox got Dara to explain the 1/R^2 thing about the planetary orbits. Cox then said - yes that's great Dara but why is it 1/R^2? And Dara just kept on mouthing whatever rhubarb came into his head whilst Cox grinned into the camera...............