The night sky

Linny

Linny

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Whenever the sky is clear, I like to go into the garden, pick out a random star which can be seen with the naked eye and use Google to find out as much information as possible about it (usually after the wife's gone to bed and I've had a drink).

Tonight's random star was a very faint one within the constellation Cepheus. For anybody who doesn't know, the constellation is shaped like a house. The star I picked out is towards the bottom centre and is called HIP 107374 / HD 207198. This particular star is a blue/white luminous giant and is.. 2992.32 light years away... almost three THOUSAND light years away and we can still see it!

Absolutely mind boggling.
 
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Linny said:
Whenever the sky is clear, I like to go into the garden, pick out a random star which can be seen with the naked eye and use Google to find out as much information as possible about it (usually after the wife's gone to bed and I've had a drink).

Tonight's random star was a very faint one within the constellation Cepheus. For anybody who doesn't know, the constellation is shaped like a house. The star I picked out is towards the bottom centre and is called HIP 107374 / HD 207198. This particular star is a blue/white luminous giant and is.. 2992.32 light years away... almost three THOUSAND light years away and we can still see it!

Absolutely mind boggling.
Click to expand...

Love out like that me :cool:
 
Linny said:
Whenever the sky is clear, I like to go into the garden, pick out a random star which can be seen with the naked eye and use Google to find out as much information as possible about it (usually after the wife's gone to bed and I've had a drink).

Tonight's random star was a very faint one within the constellation Cepheus. For anybody who doesn't know, the constellation is shaped like a house. The star I picked out is towards the bottom centre and is called HIP 107374 / HD 207198. This particular star is a blue/white luminous giant and is.. 2992.32 light years away... almost three THOUSAND light years away and we can still see it!

Absolutely mind boggling.
Click to expand...
I don’t want to turn this into a God doesn’t exist thread (although I just might have) but it’s the distances you’ve quoted that make me seriously question it. I mean why create a universe so big just for our benefit?
 
Ambivalent Squirrel said:
Think that’s far away?

Try GN-z11. The most distant thing that we know of. Discovered by NASA it’s 32 Giga-light years away, or 32 Billion Light years away :eek:
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It's the stars I can see with my own eyes which I find the most interesting. Anything else is just too much for my tiny brain!
 
Ambivalent Squirrel said:
Think that’s far away?

Try GN-z11. The most distant thing that we know of. Discovered by NASA it’s 32 Giga-light years away, or 32 Billion Light years away :eek:
Click to expand...

I find it hard to get my head around stuff like that. You just know that there are stars/planets further away than that. We're just a fleck of dust in the grand scheme of things, its absolutely mind blowing.
 
Ambivalent Squirrel said:
Think that’s far away?

Try GN-z11. The most distant thing that we know of. Discovered by NASA it’s 32 Giga-light years away, or 32 Billion Light years away :eek:
Click to expand...
I thought the universe was about 14.5 billion years old. Assuming we are moving one way, and GN z11is moving the opposite way, the maximum distance it can be from us is 29 billion light years ? Or am I missing something ?
 
tonyfromalnwick said:
I thought the universe was about 14.5 billion years old. Assuming we are moving one way, and GN z11is moving the opposite way, the maximum distance it can be from us is 29 billion light years ? Or am I missing something ?
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This is Wiki's explanation:

GN-z11 is observed as it existed 13.4 billion years ago, just 400 million years after the Big Bang; as a result, GN-z11's distance is sometimes inappropriately reported as 13.4 billion light-years, its light-travel distance measurement.

I still don't understand it..
 
Linny said:
This is Wiki's explanation:

GN-z11 is observed as it existed 13.4 billion years ago, just 400 million years after the Big Bang; as a result, GN-z11's distance is sometimes inappropriately reported as 13.4 billion light-years, its light-travel distance measurement.

I still don't understand it..
Click to expand...

I thought the expansion of the universe explained the increased distance.

Mind I think it’s a long way to the sea front from Murton, so don’t be quoting me on it :)
 
I do this with another app. Except I find the man made satellites more interesting. There's a lot of weird and sinister stuff up there that's good for a google.
 
Evil Jimmy Krankie said:
I don’t want to turn this into a God doesn’t exist thread (although I just might have) but it’s the distances you’ve quoted that make me seriously question it. I mean why create a universe so big just for our benefit?
Click to expand...

It's a test. Mankind has to learn how to bend time & space, making distance irrelevant :)
 
Linny said:
Whenever the sky is clear, I like to go into the garden, pick out a random star which can be seen with the naked eye and use Google to find out as much information as possible about it (usually after the wife's gone to bed and I've had a drink).

Tonight's random star was a very faint one within the constellation Cepheus. For anybody who doesn't know, the constellation is shaped like a house. The star I picked out is towards the bottom centre and is called HIP 107374 / HD 207198. This particular star is a blue/white luminous giant and is.. 2992.32 light years away... almost three THOUSAND light years away and we can still see it!

Absolutely mind boggling.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it might have blew up 2,000 years ago. It could have not been there for 2,000 years but we can still see it. Absolutely mind boggling.
 
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The Andromeda galaxy is worth looking out for. That is an entire galaxy 2.5 million light years away that can be seen as a fuzzy blob with the naked eye. With some binoculars it gains a bit more shape.

Find the big square in the middle of pegasus, then a line of a couple of stars from the top left. On the second star, look straight up from there and you should see it. (Check Stellarium first for a better idea!). The moon is a little below it at the moment so it might be difficult to see for a couple of weeks.

It is amazing to think that when the light we see left there, humans didn't exist as a species.
 

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