Society for Popular Astronomy

In case people were not aware, there is a petition running on the government petitions web site about light pollution. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/119428 It's the government web site so signing should not result in loads of SPAM forever more (as some other petition sites generate). The ...

An "interesting" article in the Guardian about the images from Rosetta: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/13/comet-surface-photography-rosetta-space-probe . An indirectly related point, I even registered on the Guardian site and commented on what must be one of the daftest articles ever. A...

Why would saying "elliptical" and being correct rather than "parabolic" and being wrong confuse the general public ? Ian They could be inspired by the series or they could come here and be put off astronomy for life by the tedious pedantry. Thanks for explaining the reason why "wrong" is "good" (th...

Why would saying "elliptical" and being correct rather than "parabolic" and being wrong confuse the general public ?

Ian

If the Prof. had cancelled-out gravity, Joe, why was he not free to shoot off into space? He was still bound by Earth's gravitational field and was heading for an eventual splat. I did not see the program but to my simplistic understanding (and I would think certainly at the level the program was t...

I’m sorry Ian but I thought with your commitment to the Dark Matter idea you would have had a simple explanation of what is going on. I'm not committed to an idea. Just that from what I have seen I favour it as an idea. One thing I am completely sure about is that whatever our thoughts, ideas and t...

Hi Ian. I realised you favour the dark matter idea. What I am asking is how does it work. Is it just like ordinary matter except not visible? If so, how does it cause the galaxies to break the Newtonion and Keplarian rules of orbital dynamics? All the best Maurice. Happy to explain my understanding...

Although a clarified the new forum area thought, I am neutral but I find the negative comments interesting. Firstly, when the threads prompting this one were active, many were saying "If it does not interest you then don't watch" (similar to "if it does not interest you don't read"). so a general sc...

Perhaps, on a constructive note, now might be the time to implement a suggestion someone made a long time ago that there should be a 'chat about anything you like' board. Like general but without the stipulation that it be astronomically related. I appreciate that this comes up periodically and thu...

I suggest less use of quote. Especialy, quote on top of quote on top of quote. When I read/see this I feal angry and aggresive. Even when I am not taking any part in the thread. It is like being in a very fractious court room. So less use of quote and more use of emotions perhaps? All the best Maur...

Hi Ian. Do you have an explanation for the speed being the same? All the best maurice. I have no explanation myself - I only consider the explanations of others and form my own opinion on those. Thus I can offer nothing additional to those other theories other than an uninformed vote based in parti...

Why does no one ask the question you asked, “If they are all travelling at the same speed and the outer have the longer journey, why are the arms not winding themselves into tighter spirals?” They do ask the question - whole section of my studies on galaxies about the "Spiral Winding Problem". And ...

stella wrote:You could google on "Vera Rubin" who did the pioneering work.

Had a search on her name and all I could find were the details on galaxy rotation curves and nothing about galaxies flying apart.

Ian

Hi Ian. I knew about the rotation curves but never bothered to check out the facts. I took it for granted they would prove galaxies are rotating like a wheel. The most obvious outcome of this would be that the outer parts would be travelling too fast. Now with the rotation curve data, this still se...

Dear Kevin I'm pleased your dormant interest in astronomy was triggered by the recent TV stargazing series. Being a strong critic of that series myself I cann't help wondering how many more people would have felt drawn to doing stronomy if the series had been better - but perhaps not many more in r...