Stargazers Lounge

So I just joined this forum called the Stargazers Lounge. They seem like a great community of friendly people, though they do seem to be based in the UK. I plan to ask them about good telescopes for astrophotography, both long exposure and planetary, but leaning toward long exposure. 

It seems to be a lot better than my dad's forum. He left the security settings really low, 'cause nobody looked at it, and somebody spammed it with four pages worth of ads, mainly for Nike. He put higher security up after that.

There also seems to have been a break in at the Astronomy Centre in Todmorden. This was Peter Drew's life's work. I mean what kind of a jerkface would do this!? This is like the time somebody stole a gold block from a war memorial I made in Minecraft, EXCEPT IN REAL LIFE with REAL MONEY. Jerkfaced peasant. So anyway, If you see anything suspicious on the web, I'm sure Peter Drew would be happy to know. 


I've also got my half-yearlies next week. Fun :D I think not. There is way to much going on, on top of exams, I have to do a bunch of assessment tasks as well. PAIN

Pluto's Extra Moon

These posts are coming in fast succession. I guess I'm making up for their absence. It could work, get bored, write a blog post, but really I get the feeling it should be, get bored, get off my lazy ass and study for history because my half yearlies are next week.




So anyway, last night I watched six hours straight of Voyage to the Planets and have no idea how I managed it. The Saturnian system is by far my favourite, and I find it uncanny how much Miamis looks like the Death star

 Titan is also pretty epic. You know, what with the methane rivers, freezing lava flows and dunes made of frozen atmospheric hydrocarbons. Practically the whole place is flammable!

That's smog by the way, Titan has a ridiculously thick atmosphere, for a moon anyway.


Other cool stuff in our wide wide solar system include these crazy geysers on Neptune's moon Triton.

Yeah, they go up and then take a 90 degree turn as they reach the top of Triton's thin atmosphere. Triton is the only large moon to have a retrograde orbit, and, because of this and its composition-similar to Pluto's, is thought to have originated from the Kuiper belt.


Miranda is a moon of Uranus, and has the highest cliffs in the solar system.

It is belived that the moon has been snap frozen halfway through a process where larger bits of rock sink to the bottom of the planet. This leaves us with really high cliffs, so high, that because of the low gravity on the moon, you could jump off and casually wait the ten or so minutes it would take you to get to the ground.


The moons of Uranus are mostly named after characters from Shakespeare. This means that there is a moon called Puck.


Puck


It is just about the awesomest name for a moon in the history of ever. Puck




So, after becoming all hyped up about the planets, I decided to take a simple quiz on Space.com the last question was something like "how many moons does Pluto have", me of course, put three, Charon, Nix and Hydra, though the Charon-Pluto relationship is more like that of a double planet. Actually, there are four. The fourth was discovered in mid 2011, it is called S/2011 P1, yeah, great name. And its smaller than Nix. SMALLER THAN NIX. This thing is tiny, really really tiny. It orbits in the gap between Nix and Hydra and is really, quite small.

Its also called P4, 'cause it's the fourth moon of Pluto


It was discovered when a team of astronomers went looking for rings around Pluto, and used eight minute exposures, longer than any others, so P4 was spotted and confirmed.


Ok, bye internet, hope you enjoyed my moon splurge.

Sorry About The Internet

So today I went to Westfield. Big mistake.

Mum dragged me around David Jones, this was not fun, rather, it was BORING
Usually she detests Westfield, but today she tried to convince me to let her buy me stuff. Yeah, No. Why don't you buy me the Nexstar 8SE, and while we're at it, perhaps a filter kit and some astrophotography gear. 

Oh and also some other cool stuff I found on the interweb:

Source, I love this, 'tis AMAZING


Also this Geeks Brain shirt. This describes my personal addiction so well I cannot begin to comment.

I also recently found the Space shop. There are probably some irritating complications like "cannot be shipped to Australia", but who couldn't love this Expendable shirt, or Sheldon's Friendship Algorithm. It was these meteorites that first attracted me, but I soon found replica space suits, documentaries, "Klingon talk now", and laptop bags made of parachute from space.


Now, If only I had money.


Oh, and you know how I was watching all that Star Wars, well, guess who maxed the download limit. Now my internet, and everybody else's, is going r e a l l y  s l o w l y. So yeah, sorry.


I also have exams coming up, so I need to be studying, which I am totally doing right now. Totally.

Goodbye internet, and those four people who have looked at this, three of which came from a site containing unsavoury images, goodbye

35/36 and Really Annoying Boys

Hello Internet

Well, once a week failed, how about when I feel like it. I think the absence of posts was due to the amount of Star Wars I have been watching. I started with A New Hope and progressed in order of creation. I even succumbed to watching the animated Clone Wars film and series, which actually aren't all that bad, though nothing compared to the original movies. And then I ran out. So now I have Star Wars cravings that cannot be satisfied, damn.


Anyway, I got 35 out of 36 on that science assignment I was going to post, but I still haven't got it back yet. I missed out on one mark in the discussion, where we had to refer to our graphs, guess what I didn't do. 


Recently I have become friends with a guy who is possibly the most annoying person on this planet. I seriously don't know why he is my friend, he pisses me off like nobody else ever could. Earlier today I gave him peasant status because he was getting on my nerves (sometimes people earn a status because of something they do, I have genius status whilst a handful of other people have god status, only I can give out statuses). 


Also, whilst we were waiting for science, this other guy, who is probably the second most annoying person in the world, except he is actually vaguely funny, stole my hat, and ran off. I chased him. Up the stairs, along a corridor and back down some stairs. I almost had him, but then this senior guy caught him and gave me my hat back. Apparently we  were quite the sight returning to class, me, triumphant with my hat firmly on my head, and him, smiling a strange goofy smile.

So Internet, have fun waiting for me

Damn You Supermoon

Hai there interweb.


You know how I said regularly updated, well, yeah. I'll try to do at least one post a week, not that anybody actually reads this thing, 0 page views so far.

So, recently in my life stuff happened, NOT including the supermoon, damn you supermoon. I missed it, usually I'm on top of these things. I did see a link on facebook, but it lead to some thing about lunacy, by Dr Karl, whom I do admire, BUT I WANTED TO KNOW WHEN THE GODDAMN SUPERMOON WAS. Turned out to be last weekend. :/

This is Redeeming Light, the photographer being Victor R. Caivano. Full rights go to him and the National Geographic website. There are more here and here as well, this was just one of my favorites. 

Perigee moon is the scientific name for the phenomenon which occurs when the moon is at its closest to Earth, because of its elliptical orbit. The other side is apogee. When the moon is perigee it is 50, 000km closer to earth, and when it coincides with the full moon, about once a year, a truly spectacular event is observed.

The moon appeared 14% bigger in the sky, though it was probably hard to tell because of lack of points of reference. This particular moon reached its perigee at 1pm in Australia, and its fullest at 1:36, it still would have been big in the night though. But in the USA the moon reached perigee at 11:34, only to become its fullest one minute later - the timing was almost perfect.  


Also, to clear something up, in many of the pictures the moon appears very large. Thi is a phenomenon called the moon illusion, and it occurs when the moon is seen next to objects on the ground. It is not fully understood by astronomers or phycologists, but I assure you, if you measure the moon at an arm's length whilst it is on the horison, and when it is in the sky, you will get the same measurement.


Ok, back to life, yeah, I really do love that stuff.




Recently I turned in a scientific report, I'll post it when I get it back, it is called: 

Does the Temperature of Honey Affect how Fast it Flows?

In fact, it was during the reasearch for this report that I decided on the name of this blog, I found it here

In fact, one of the major differences between styles of mashed potatoes is the viscosity of the starchy mass: some people like their potatoes running and teeming with milk and butter (they are fans of low-viscosity potatoes), while others like their potatoes drier and stickier, so they almost crack rather than flow (these people are devoted to high-viscosity potatoes).

these people are devoted to high-viscosity potatoes

devoted to high-viscosity potatoes

The name for my last blog post came from my physics textbook (yep I'm in year 8 and I have a physics textbook, don't ask why) If I can't think of a name I'll probably get another one from there.


On a completley unrelated topic, we have been doing Animal Farm in english, and talking about totalitarianism, Hitler and the Russian Communist Revoloution alot, you know, communisim could have worked if it weren't for unconciously power-hungry people. Anyway, we had to find a few book covers of Animal Farm, and analyse the visual text. I found this:

Yum, Napoleon with blood on his mouth, fat Napoleon, tyrant Napoleon.
This brilliance is produced by Lucy Hexter, on her blog Gin Mouse Art, and all credit goes to her, in this brilliance, as well as others she has produced.

Ok, goodbye interweb, see you again soon

Is there a Magnetic Torque on a Current Loop?

Hello!

This is what I hope is the beginning of a regularly updated blog.

hope

Just to let the internet know, I am an absolutely terrible speller, a completely obsessed Whovian, and a lover of science, mostly astrophysics, but other subjects as well.


So that is what this blog will probably be about, well, that and other random crap I find amusing. Like this:

oh, and also this:

The guy who composed this song is an ex-student of our school, and he came in to give a presentation. Aparently, it was due the next day at 9:30, and he was sitting on Facebook at 10:30 the night before, and, having not started, was wondering what the hell to do. And then he had the idea of setting his News Feed to music.



Oh, and, by the way, my science teacher is a god