Stars, Including the Earth's Sun

#76

Ol' Wifehorn and Numbah One Son made a valiant effort last night, but it was cloudy and raining. Some of the locals we know got some good photos the night before last. I do eclipses, not Northern Lights.

p0rtia · #77

Medford, MA, May 9

: Aurora Medford.jpeg (195.23 KiB) Viewed 146 times

#78

Nice!

I've seen the northern lights before, in Alaska and Norway. These did not match the ones in Alaska, but were better than the ones in Norway, and I was really surprised at just how nice these were. I was not expecting much, and they far exceeded my expectations. We just went across the street to the ball field where there's a light left on all night, and it was still excellent. We were going to go back last night at midnight, but it started raining right before that, so we didn't bother.

We made a trip up to Alaska one February just to watch the northern lights in Talkeetna and Fairbanks (train trip), but the most awesome ones we saw in Alaska was in an August. We flew out later in the day, and looking out the window, we could look back and see the curve of the earth with the lights over it.

#79

Pissed off. SWMBO hadda cold and didn't wanna drive 3 kilometers to the beach to see the show (too much light and too many trees near us in our immediate neighborhood) and its overcast isn't it? (No)

Apparently it was a good show here in Melbourne.

RTH10260 · #80

next place to migrate to over climate change?

Earth-sized planet spotted orbiting small star with 100 times sun’s lifespan
Speculoos-3b, 55 light years away, is only second planetary system to be found around an ultra-cool red dwarf

Ian Sample Science editor
Wed 15 May 2024 11.36 CEST

Astronomers have discovered a new Earth-sized planet orbiting a small, cool star that is expected to shine for 100 times longer than the sun.

The rocky world, called Speculoos-3b, is 55 light years from Earth and was detected as it passed in front of its host star, an ultra-cool red dwarf that is half as hot as the sun and 100 times less luminous.

The newly discovered world, described as “practically the same size as our planet”, swings around the red dwarf once every 17 hours, making a year on the planet shorter than a single Earth day.

But while the years are short on Speculoos-3b, the days and nights are never-ending. “We believe that the planet rotates synchronously, so that the same side, called the day side, always faces the star, just like the moon does for the Earth. On the other hand, the night side would be locked in endless darkness,” said Michaël Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium and lead author on the study.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/art ... -red-dwarf