Space Forum / Astronomy / January 2005

Having had my interest in astronomy re-kindled due to the long dark and
surprisingly clear nights I've started looking at buying a scope again.
I bought a Celestron 8 GPS a couple of years ago but didn't use it much
and eventually sold it (about 5-6 months later).

Hi All
Can someone please help. I am trying to work out the Stromgren Radius
for an active Galaxy that is acting as a source of ionising photons.
The nucleus of the Galaxy has an ionising Luminosity L of 10^37 Watts.

As requested (?) on a different thread, here is my review of the Philips
"Dark Skies Map".
Coverage & scale
It covers Britain, inc. Shetland Islands and Channel Islands, and Ireland;

Orange of Aldebaran, blue of The Pleiades and green of comet Machholz.
Nice easy finder pattern tonight.
http://www.digitalsky.org.uk/comets/Machholz/M45+Hyades+Machholz.jpg

A recent Science News had an article about what seems to be a star
observed in infra red and which seems to have a mass of about one
thousandth of a solar mass. I've heard it claimed that Jupiter and Saturn
could never become stars because they are not massive enough. Does this

Cosmic Decreasing Gravity and the Expansion of the Earth
By Louis Nielsen, Denmark  http://www.rostra.dk/louis
My considerations about an expanding Earth are the following.      
The Earth is expanding as a consequence of a cosmic decreasing

i recieved a celestron nexstar 114gt for christmas from my girlfriend
(i'm very pleased with this given i've only just started on astonomy and
it's only been 14yrs with the girlfriend so hardly sufficient time for
her to get used to my fancies). so i went out the next day and ...

I need to be advised on buying a new scope whilst visiting orlando this year. i known its cheaper but does anyone know of a good shop in this area........

I imaged Q2 Machholz and have a movie showing its motion across the sky
during a 96 minute period.  The comet was clearly visible under the
full moon with the C-11 scope at 93x, but quite difficult to find in
the 7x50 binoculars. Transparency was 2/10 Pickering with high thin

After a brief session recording of Comet Machholz widefield, the
camera was panned westwards towards Cetus in the hope of recording
Mira [o Ceti].   It's recorded - just - at minimum light [maxima
May04/ Apr05] and it's probably visible in good bins.  

I read recently about pulsars, aka neutron stars, and how thier pulses
are due to their speedy rotation.  Are then actually saying that there
are stars out there that can actually rotate (around) twelve times a
second?  Does the angular velocity of an object rotating this fast ...

I am the proud owner of a new telescope. It's a reflector 900mm telescope.
It came with 2 x Barlow and two eyepieces; 6mm and 25mm. I was trying to
view Saturn the other night, I managed to focus in with 6mm and the
2xBarlow. Problem was it looks so small, what eyepiece should I ...

Has anyone on this forum made a long focus telescope? I like the
design of the scope in the link below, since the design seems simple
enough:
http://www.geocities.com/telescope1999/14-5inch.html

Happy New Year!
Typically, it cleared last night when we were due to visit some
friends for a New Year's Eve celebration.  Risking divorce, I took
advantage of a few early cloud gaps and snapped a couple of rapid