Anyone for an astronomy thread?

[hobbes]

Saturn was right next to the Moon last night too. I'd have got bessie out if I wasn't so knackered.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Perfectly clear skies here at the moment. Fingers crossed for the blood moon tonight. Is it going to be quite low on the horizon (it's very shortly sfter sunset, isn't it?) I might have to walk up the hill to the east of our house to see it if it is.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I hate you guys so much. The Sky is blue here right now, which is no fucking use. I'm starting to wonder are some of the more neurotic aspects of Irish culture and society are down to our iron age ancestors often having to wait until midday to be sure that the sun had actually come up.

[Lang Spoon]

We had an ET sized moon in coastal North County Dublin last night, and a Turneresque sunset. Yr too far west man.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

A thick shelf of cloud again tonight. At least it was nice for St MacDara's day.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Oh good god, what a carcrash.

Trump's press conference honouring the men of apollo did not go well. It went very badly off the rails indeed.

[ursus arctos]

By the standard of this administration, that was a rousing success

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

This video of the interplay of the rising sun with an Atlas V launch is just beautiful.

[Sits]

Incredible.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Peak night for the Perseids meteor shower tonight. Total cloud cover here at the moment but fingers crossed...

[Ginger Yellow]

Long-read on SolarCity's under-delivery.

The company once controlled two-thirds of the residential market; now, according to the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, its share is less than 7 percent. In the second quarter of this year, SolarCity installed only 29 megawatts of solar panels—far below the 10,000 megawatts in annual installations that Musk had promised. “Total implosion” is how one SolarCity insider describes it.

[Nocturnal Submission]

This is quite neat: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49648746

Bit of a schlep though.

[ursus arctos]

[URL="https://twitter.com/robertdedwards/status/1194097714209968129?s=21"]https://twitter.com/robertdedwards/status/1194097714209968129[/URL]

[Sits]

Amazing

[Nocturnal Submission]

Not a biggie, but noticed these photos of the Milky Way from the Florida Keys on Wiki and thought that they were rather lovely:

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It reminds me of all the footage of the Chelyabinsk meteor that was filmed on car dash cams.

[ursus arctos]

Yes, though my recollection is that that was during daylight

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I think it was early morning. and loads of people were out in their cars.

[hobbes]

Anyone else get a look at the Mercury transit yesterday?
I got a couple of quick views between the clouds.

[ursus arctos]

Too cloudy here

The stream from the Canaries was good

Guy started a thread

I like to think about how mind blowing that phenomenon was to 17th century astronomers

[Nocturnal Submission]

Right, British astronomy enthusiasts, what's the bright star/planet currently just to the right of the moon?

[ursus arctos]

Venus

[Gangster Octopus]

No, no; he wanted British astronomy enthusiasts...

[Nocturnal Submission]

No, no; he wanted British astronomy enthusiasts...

Heh. I did think about widening the franchise to Northern Hemisphere astronomers but wasn't sure where said celestial body would be in the North American/Western European skies at the present time.

Many thanks, UA. When there's a bright point in the night skies that isn't the moon or a plane (or firework, or helicopter, or drone...) it usually seems to be Venus.

[ursus arctos]

Always a good default guess