Pluto, space, & beyond.

[Betty]

From our view anywhere on earth, or low earth orbit, the sun doesn't appear that close to the milky way center this time of the year. It gets close Nov. to Feb, crossing the center around the new year.

Here's the computer-generated view of what was in the sky around noon on our Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 25, 2016). Of course in reality, the sun would have out-shined everything, so you would have only actually seen just the sun, even though the milky way was there.

[Betty]

On Nov. 29, 2016 the moon joins the picture but there was no eclipse. The view in the faked picture, the sun wouldn't have been seen in that position of the galactic center for millions of years.

[Betty]

The sun, from our view on earth, or in low earth orbit will eclipse the galactic plane at 11:23am E. USA time, Christmas eve, 2017. The picture below is accurate for that time, but you won't see anything but the bright sun.

Every November or December some fake news prophet or astrologer (usually on Facebook because they're are more naive) will claim this rare alignment happens only once every 10,000 or 60,000 years, & predict disasters from it. Nope. This alignment happens once a year, every year.

If you draw a line from the moon, through the sun, & all the planets, it doesn't line up with the galactic plane. That's because our solar system's plane is on its side compared to the galactic plane.

One theory is that our solar system was part of other smaller galaxy that was captured, collided, or merged with the milky way. Another theory is during the early formation of the solar system, it was actually a binary system. The 2 suns collided flipping the forming solar system on its side.

[Betty]

eclipses 2001-2020

[Betty]

Eclipses 2021-2040

[Betty]

Lunar eclipses

[Angela M...]

Thanks for the photo's and the Info Betty, I always try to catch something like this or the Meteor showers etc. since I was a young boy. Back in the day I had two very good SLR cameras and telephoto lenses. I could take great photo's of the moon, stars and the Northern lights etc. and used some in my projects at school. Hard to find film, batteries and a shop to develop the prints now in my area.

[Betty]

Lockheed Martin unveiled it's spaceship design to get people to Mars in 10 years. Looks like it's gonna cost at least a trillion dollars.

http://unclegadget.com/media/marsmission.mp4
(3.9mb, 3 minutes, SVCD quality)

[Betty]

They have competition from Elon Musk. He says he can get there by 2024. It will be interesting to see who gets there & back first... in one piece & still alive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdUX3ypDVwI

[Betty]

Since the new year until last night, there's been a lot of bright meteor sightings. They are probably associated with the Quadrantid meteor shower, which peaked January 3. The Quadrantid shower though, is not particularly known for a lot on meteors, or very bright ones, but has been known to produce just a few large bright meteors occasionally before.

Usually meteor showers produce very faint "falling stars", most of which can only be seen in dark rural & country skies.  The meteors are usually about the size of a grain of sand to a small pebble. These bright sightings were probably meteors 6-10 inches in diameter.

Since the New Year, we've had frequent bright sightings from Virginia to Quebec, as far west as the northern mid-west USA, & as far east at the UK & Finland.

These are those that were caught on video.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LZ-WqXOGlo