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Embarrassing astronomy news

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

The cosmos is not sorry about uranus

Did they ever read that title aloud before releasing the article?

:lol:

Given the rest of the article, I think that was the point...

uranus has been pounded not once, but twice!

And just how did Saturn get such a big ring?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenGum (Post 764254)

And just how did Saturn get such a big ring?

By mooning over Uranus.

No facial comet shots?

:lol:

thanks, you nut cakes, for making me laugh this morning.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenGum (Post 764254)

And just how did Saturn get such a big ring?

Quote:

Originally Posted by infinite monkey (Post 764333)

By mooning over Uranus.

Close, it was by using ass-steroids.

CBS News
October 24, 2011 6:57 PM
2,000-year-old stellar mystery solved

Quote:

Astronomers finally know why the first documented supernova was super-sized.
The exploded star was observed by the ancient Chinese
in the year 185, and visible for eight months.
It was later found to be a bigger-than-expected supernova remnant,
8,000 light years away.

Fine and good. The Chinese did see the supernova in 185 CE.

But how about sightings in other cultures of that time ?
I found images of a pictograph of a supernova (?) by the Anasazi
in the Four Corners area of the US, but that was in the 1200's CE
I've also seen one reference to cave drawings in Guam, but no date.

Wouldn't you think more cultures would have left evidence
of this or other supernovae events ?
.

like the star of Bethlehem you mean?

300 inches here and 300 inches there...

LA Times
Thomas H. Maugh II
July 18, 2012

Pioneer spacecraft 'anomaly' solved, and it's not new physics

Quote:

Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 were launched in 1972 and 1973, respectively,
on a trajectory toward the edge of the solar system. In the early 1980s,
controllers at NASA's JPL detected a slight deceleration in the crafts' speeds.
The effect was initially dismissed as resulting from leftover propellant in the fuel lines,
but it persisted much longer than could be accounted for by such a cause.
In 1998, John Anderson of JPL and his colleagues calculated that the craft
had a deceleration rate of about 300 inches per day.

Because they had no explanation for the slowing, the team speculated
that it might be caused by some new physics that contradicted
Einstein's general theory of relativity.<snip>

...they were able to calculate the amount of heat generated by the electrical
subsystems of the craft and the decay of plutonium in the power sources.
They concluded that the radiation of that heat in the direction of
the spacecraft's travel was sufficient to explain the slight deceleration.

"The effect is something like when you are driving a car and
the photons from your headlights are pushing you backward," Turyshev said.
"It's very subtle."