As the car leaves home, say, “Oh, I forgot the tripod, but it’s OK, I can use the car roof.” Drive to the other side of the island, so you can see the sunset. Say airily, “If we go a bit lower, I’m sure we can get below the clouds. When you get lower, find a spot without many streetlights and point optimistically at the gap between the cloud base…
The Philae lander is SAFELY down on the comet, half a billion miles 28 light minutes from Earth. ( See Rosetta and the Comet) Yay for the European Space Agency – nobody’s ever done this before.
Rosetta is a robotic spacecraft built by the European Space Agency which is due to reach comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in August. It’s the first mission designed to both orbit and land on a comet. The Rosetta space probe orbiter, which features 12 instruments, will orbit 67P for 17 months and is designed to complete the most detailed study of a comet ever attempted. In November 2014 the Philae robotic lander,…
As far as I can tell, Comet ISON is neither alive not dead, but in some stage in-between. Something came out from behind the sun. Watch this space. Por lo que puedo decir, el cometa ISON no está ni vivo ni muerto, pero en algún en el medio. Algo salió de detrás del sol. Mire este espacio. Soweit ich das beurteilen kann, ist weder lebendig Comet ISON nicht tot, sondern…
< It looks like comet ISON has broken up. I’m disappointed, but I’m not surprised. The comet’s closest approach was just 1,165,000 km (724,000 mi) from the surface of the sun. This is not a safe place for a snowball. The image above shows just how close it got. The black disc in the centre of the picture is called a cronograph. It covers up the sun so that...
As comets approach the sun, they warm up and the head and tail grow bigger and brighter. ISON is now visible, in the constellation Virgo, near the bright star Spica. That’s in the east before dawn. There’s a finder chart at http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2012S1/2012S1.html and more informationa at Phil Plait’s blog. Please excuse the rush. I’m trying to finish a book of children’s stories about La Palma’s amazing night sky. Cuando los…