*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

Guys,

I'm trying to find a Stephen Hawking documentary that goes on at the end, and asks the question is there a creator, and Stephen (well someone narrating his voice for him) Says no, because before the big bang, time didn't exist, therefore how could someone of possibly created anything, if time didn't exist.

Anyway, i was watching on on the Science channel, one day just while flicking through, and didn't think to get the name, and I'd really like to watch it again.

I know its not either one of .......

A brief history of time or Into The Universe, By Stephen Hawking.. Cos i've watched both.. But it was very much like Into The Universe.. Same type of explanations etc. Unless it was editied out of the American version of Into The Universe, US edition? To not upset all the religious nuts out here in the USA ? Which seems strange, since it was on the science channel in the USA.

Anyway, anyone seen it and know its name ?
 
thedoc46 said:
Guys,

I'm trying to find a Stephen Hawking documentary that goes on at the end, and asks the question is there a creator, and Stephen (well someone narrating his voice for him) Says no, because before the big bang, time didn't exist, therefore how could someone of possibly created anything, if time didn't exist.

Anyway, i was watching on on the Science channel, one day just while flicking through, and didn't think to get the name, and I'd really like to watch it again.

I know its not either one of .......

A brief history of time or Into The Universe, By Stephen Hawking.. Cos i've watched both.. But it was very much like Into The Universe.. Same type of explanations etc. Unless it was editied out of the American version of Into The Universe, US edition? To not upset all the religious nuts out here in the USA ? Which seems strange, since it was on the science channel in the USA.

Anyway, anyone seen it and know its name ?
Click to expand...

Stephen Hawking's Grand Design

http://www.discoverychannel.ca/Article.aspx?aid=43209

The episide you're after is called 'Did God create the Universe?'

:cool:
 
samir_ansari said:
Thanks guys, the picture is a mosiac made up of 4 panes. Each pane was with the following setup:

Canon 450D on a portable motorised table top tripod
10 x 30 seconds (with about 10 dark frames)
50mm @ f1.8 + 2" Astronomik light pollution filter
Click to expand...

Cool! It seems there's still some motion trail at 30 seconds but I guess that's unavoidable as the 450D noise levels any higher in the ISO range would result in unusable images. What kind of light pollution filter setup is it btw? This has got be very interested now that I can shoot stuff without worrying about high ISO!
 
mrk said:
Cool! It seems there's still some motion trail at 30 seconds but I guess that's unavoidable as the 450D noise levels any higher in the ISO range would result in unusable images. What kind of light pollution filter setup is it btw? This has got be very interested now that I can shoot stuff without worrying about high ISO!
Click to expand...

Yep that motion trail is due to the fact that I had never aligned to the South Celestial pole before and it's extremely hard to find so I think my alignment was off by a fraction.

The light pollution filter is just a 2" Astronomik CCD filter that I simply placed ontop of the camera lens as the camera was pointing upward but I'm planning on getting a 52mm-2" step-up ring so I can just screw it onto the lens in future.
 
Mqo9e.png

My first attempt at getting jupiter through my telescope, captured using a modified xbox live webcam then the video stacked to produce the image. Not too shabby for a first go i think got 3 moons on the left Io, Ganymede and Europa.
 
Amazing! So a gas giant orbiting 2 stars which in turn orbit 2 more stars?

They say that computer simulations using gathered data missed this system so indeed, imagine how many other awesome things have passed through purely because the programming in those computers didn’t allow them to recognise such abnormalities.
 
Exciting news as a planet is found to be orbiting the closest star to us, Alpha Centauri:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/10/16/alpha-centauri-has-a-planet/

The planet orbits close in to Alpha Cen B, and is technically called Alpha Centauri Bb – planets have lower case letters assigned to them, starting at b. Its mass is only 1.13 times the Earth’s mass, making this one of the lower mass planets yet found! But don’t get your hopes up of visiting it – its period is only 3.24 days, meaning it must be only about 6 million kilometers (less than 4 million miles) from its star. Even though Alpha Cen B is a bit cooler than the Sun, this still means the planet is baking hot, far too hot to sustain any kind of life as we know it, or even liquid water.
Click to expand...

What I find mind blowing is that they were able to detect a half meter per second doppler shift on a planet orbiting a star just over 4 light years away.
 
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