anyone watch the Wonders of the Solar System last night?

[Lamp]

BBC iPlayer - Wonders of the Solar System: Empire of the Sun

I don't usually like watching Brian Cox, but was fairly interesting, and the more physics / space programmes on TV the happier I am. On the whole I found it a little disappointing.

Some more detail about how the sun actually works would have been good, rather than a lot of dumbing down & footage showing him swanning off around the world on exotic holidays going "oh look a total eclipse of the sun" or "oh wow aurora borealis" or "look at me standing above a waterfall" or "I'm driving a range rover in 111 F heat" etc

Sooner listen to Michio Kaku or Max Tegmark anyday of the week

 

[cHodAX]

He annoyed the fuck out of me when he totally skipped Venus and spent half the show playing to camera rather than covering the subject matter. Astronomy 101 for dummies.

 

[Zenith.UK]

I didn't see the "Me Me Me" that you saw Lamp.
Yes, he's enthusiastic.
Yes, he can play up for the camera.
Yes, he said Sun, shine or sunshine a lot (he was a science consultant for the film Sunshine).

I can think of a lot of other presenters who would have been a lot more irritating (Chris Lintott being one example).

It was still a watchable program with the camera work that BBC documentaries seem to have these days. Watching in HD was great for those deep sky shots with loads of stars and while the detailed science may be not be up to your exacting standards, it still did a good job of getting across solar activity, brightness flux, space weather and magnetic reconnection events. It made the subject approachable and understandable to those without a background in astrophysics. Hell, I made a point of recording it for my daughter to watch... she'll love it.

We need more good science documentaries, so I don't understand why you're panning the programme when it did a good job of what it set out to do.

 

[Bahumat]

I watched it but had a couple of questions.

They said something about the Sun being made up Hydrogen and Helium. If this is burning super fucking hot, how comes it's not ran out? is it producing these constantly?

Also is the Sun just the same as a normal star, but much hotter? If so, is there any indication of another star becoming like the sun?

p.s. i am a n00b at this subject

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

iPlayer...

 

[Chronictank]

Completely agree with Zenith,
If it was presenting a complex topic in a manner where most people are able to understand and appreciate it as well as making it engaging and enjoyable to watch.

Unless your a astronomy/science buff Max Tegmark is pretty boring, kids certainly wouldn't pay attention to him

 

[cHodAX]

Completely agree with Zenith,
If it was presenting a complex topic in a manner where most people are able to understand and appreciate it as well as making it engaging and enjoyable to watch.

Unless your a astronomy/science buff Max Tegmark is pretty boring, kids certainly wouldn't pay attention to him

My issue was the face time he got, seems a good looking lad gets more time than he should and the subject matter was dumbed down too. Totally overlooking Venus is unforgiveable in my eyes, it is our closest neighbour and possibly the most intriguing planet in the solar system.

 

[Chronictank]

My issue was the face time he got, seems a good looking lad gets more time than he should and the subject matter was dumbed down too. Totally overlooking Venus is unforgiveable in my eyes, it is our closest neighbour and possibly the most intriguing planet in the solar system.

bear in mind its a mini-series afaik not stand alone episode

 

[Dahakon]

I watched it but had a couple of questions.

They said something about the Sun being made up Hydrogen and Helium. If this is burning super fucking hot, how comes it's not ran out? is it producing these constantly?

The sun is "burning" hydrogen by turning it into helium with nuclear fusion (the same thing that happens in a hydrogen bomb). It will eventually run out of hydrogen, turning it all into Helium. Once this happens it will start doing nuclear fusion with helium, expand to become a Red Giant and reach somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Mars if I remember correctly. Once all the helium is used up, it will either go nove and end up shrinking down to a white dwarf star, or go super nova and form a black hole.

Also is the Sun just the same as a normal star, but much hotter? If so, is there any indication of another star becoming like the sun?

The sun is just a normal star, it's one of the small cooler ones, it's completely average, no hotter than any other of it's size, and it is really quite a small star compaired to many that we know of.

Don't be a noob with this stuff, astro-physics is fun!

 

[Bahumat]

The sun is "burning" hydrogen by turning it into helium with nuclear fusion (the same thing that happens in a hydrogen bomb). It will eventually run out of hydrogen, turning it all into Helium. Once this happens it will start doing nuclear fusion with helium, expand to become a Red Giant and reach somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Mars if I remember correctly. Once all the helium is used up, it will either go nove and end up shrinking down to a white dwarf star, or go super nova and form a black hole.



The sun is just a normal star, it's one of the small cooler ones, it's completely average, no hotter than any other of it's size, and it is really quite a small star compaired to many that we know of.

Don't be a noob with this stuff, astro-physics is fun!

Thanks Dahakon

So what they were saying about how stars are formed, if one formed right next to the sun, it'd be pretty much the same thing (in principal?)

 

[Tuthmes]

iPlayer...

Use Firefox. Download FoxyProxy. Search for a UK proxy (it's an IP adress). Manually enter it into FoxyProxy. Watch iPlayer from anywhere.

I do agree it's stupid though.

 

[cHodAX]

bear in mind its a mini-series afaik not stand alone episode

You can't do a tour of the solar system and ignore Venus, ok they might come back to it but come on it would have taken 10 seconds just to give it a passing mention.

 

[Lamp]

any science programme worth its salt makes at least passing reference to "the surface temperature on venus is hot enough to melt lead"....maybe they'll cover that when they do the "hot planets"

 

[Zenith.UK]

Thanks Dahakon

So what they were saying about how stars are formed, if one formed right next to the sun, it'd be pretty much the same thing (in principal?)

Those colourful clouds that you see in astronomy books are nebulae and they're usually birthplaces of stars or graveyards.

"Pillars of Creation" - stars are being 'born' at the tops of the 'pillars'

Crab Nebula - the remnant of a supernova 1000 years ago.

The beauty of it all is that the stuff blown out by a supernova will eventually get recycled into the raw material for new stars. This is shown by something called the "metallicity" of stars and shows how many times the material has been in a star before. The Sun isn't a 1st generation or even 2nd generation star. It's something like 5th-7th generation based upon it's composition.

Or put another way... EVERYTHING you see around you in the world was once formed in the centre of a star that exploded. We are ALL made of stardust. Literally!

 

[ilaya]

some of the pictures from hubble are crazy. was one last year showing 2 galaxies close together, and a trail behind one of them.... GALAXIES had collided!!! damn... blows your mind... what do you do? nothing! scary arsed shit but fascinating

 

[cHodAX]

Those colourful clouds that you see in astronomy books are nebulae and they're usually birthplaces of stars or graveyards.

"Pillars of Creation" - stars are being 'born' at the tops of the 'pillars'

Crab Nebula - the remnant of a supernova 1000 years ago.

The beauty of it all is that the stuff blown out by a supernova will eventually get recycled into the raw material for new stars. This is shown by something called the "metallicity" of stars and shows how many times the material has been in a star before. The Sun isn't a 1st generation or even 2nd generation star. It's something like 5th-7th generation based upon it's composition.

Or put another way... EVERYTHING you see around you in the world was once formed in the centre of a star that exploded. We are ALL made of stardust. Literally!

Utterly cool, nice post.

 

[Lamp]

Eta carinae

 

[Dahakon]

some of the pictures from hubble are crazy. was one last year showing 2 galaxies close together, and a trail behind one of them.... GALAXIES had collided!!! damn... blows your mind... what do you do? nothing! scary arsed shit but fascinating

The Milky Way has some star clusters in it which are the remains of small galaxies which we collided with billions of years ago, and we are on a collision course to hit the Andromeda galaxy sometime in the future (although we are talking time scales of the life of stars here, so no need to panic just yet).

 

[Exioce]

If you like watching this sort of stuff I thoroughly recommend getting a small telescope, or even a pair of 10x50 binoculars.
Endless variety of things to see, and you learn a lot when hunting for new objects.

And a hat, and gloves. It's freaking cold out at night this time of year :|

 

[Access Denied]

If you like watching this sort of stuff I thoroughly recommend getting a small telescope, or even a pair of 10x50 binoculars.
Endless variety of things to see, and you learn a lot when hunting for new objects.

And a hat, and gloves. It's freaking cold out at night this time of year :|

Skylight in the roof and no streetlights for 200 yards = Win!

 

[Lamp]

Pointless for me to put a telescope up in W11 lol
Now if I lived in the middle of nowhere with zero street lighting....

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

Rosetta nebula:

Spoiler

Milky way and Andromeda galaxy collision simulation (expected in approximately 4.5 billion years):

Spoiler

YouTube - Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy collision simulation
YouTube - Andromeda/MW Collision (Universe Sandbox)

 

[Tuthmes]

 

[Lamp]

BBC2 Tuesday 9 March 9pm

Horizon

"Is Everything We Know About the Universe Wrong?"

 

[kirennia]

Just watched the second one in the series and I'm more then happy with what's been said in both so far. Okay so he hasn't gone into great detail but this is television afterall...

As for the guy himself, I have no qualms about what he's saying. He's obviously very passionate about what he does and seems like a thoroughly nice chap... it's not often you'd see a presenter open and hold the car door for the cameraman as a tornado is about to strike.

I do love astronomy; what's been on recently has been phenominal. It can't be long before we end up properly going to space...

 

[Jiggs]

BBC2 Tuesday 9 March 9pm

Horizon

"Is Everything We Know About the Universe Wrong?"

That was a really good show! Goes quite well the the Brian Cox series too.

The more I read about it the more it seems that we'll never get out of the solar system via conventional propulsion. Some sort of space-folding-dimension-jumping seems much more likely given the distances involved.

The age of the universe/sun also intrigues me. 14Bn years old and the sun is 5bn years old then to be honest we're arriving on the scene quite early. Sure "quite early" is relative, some other civilisation may be a billion years ahead, but on galactic timescales it's not that much really.

 

[fettoken]

I watched Wonders of the solar system on swedish television a week ago perhaps. Great learning program. Very very interesting.

 

[chipper]

YouTube - Star Size Comparison HD


this made me feel small hehehe

chances are our sun will prob get to the size of arcturus or aldebaran when it starts to die

 

[cHodAX]

Chipper, that is just awesome, gonna send that to many friends.

 

[fettoken]

That white icy star looks fluffy, who's up for moving there?