For those of you with astronomical interests, there will be a partial solar eclipse at dawn tomorrow (Tuesday). To be precise, it starts at 6.40 UT and point of greatest partiality will be at 8.50 UT. (For the anal retentives among you, it is a partial solar occultation or partial terrestrial eclipse)
forgive my ignorance, but what is UT? a timezone? which? what's that in GMT?
*grabs eye protecty glasses* yay!
UT stands for Universal Time and replaces GMT which technically no longer exists.
Greenwich Mean Time no longer exists
When did this happen?!
And is this eclipse going to be visible across the country?
oh............my...........GOD.
when did this happen?!
GMT does still exist, it's just 'depreciated', so folk are encouraged not to use it. For us plebs just telling the time, GMT and UTC are fairly equal, but when you get to sciencey type stuff, the tiny differences matter, and eventually they'll drift far enough apart that it will matter, so everyone's being encouraged to use UTC instead so that GMT dies before it becomes unusable. It's all to do with the Earth's rotation slowing down and thus time slowing (kinda) at an almost imperceptible rate, so they're adding 'leap seconds' to compensate and keep us at the correct time going by the stars and solar system and junk.
time is SLOWING?!
heh... i shall use this to my advantage when those fabled grab bags come back in stock... while the rest of you are stuck in slow-mo i'll snap them all up! ^__^
theres a meteor shower tonight also! its coming from the east near poliades. not much going on where we are here, but its said to be peaking by about 5 am ish i think.
and tonight as well.
Well, it gives me an excuse to post a link to this Stephen Fry video:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKdGwfMD8u8
thats really clever
Missed it! Damn!
When's the next one?
Bloody missed it !
I think the next one is June 2012
violeteyes wrote:
no the next partial solar eclipse is june 2011 but europe probably wont see it. and there wont be a full eclipse until i am an old old lady External Media
I'm almost positive I heard something on the TV about next year ? Hope your right violeteyes External Media
Just looked at this site and the next one is 2015 ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_visible_from_the_United_Kingdom_1000%E2%80%932090_AD
hopefully i'll see one when we get the shaver out this weekend lol
I heard there were going to be 4 partial solar eclipses in 2011, although don't take my word on that.
violeteyes wrote:
I-Love-Women x wrote:
violeteyes wrote:
no the next partial solar eclipse is june 2011 but europe probably wont see it. and there wont be a full eclipse until i am an old old lady External Media
I'm almost positive I heard something on the TV about next year ? Hope your right violeteyes External Media
Just looked at this site and the next one is 2015 ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_visible_from_the_United_Kingdom_1000%E2%80%932090_AD
never trust wikipedia External Media i was watching the stargazing live and the funny scientist man said there are three more this year. however, they may not be viewable to great britain External Media
The topic is fascinating - the rotational kinetic energy of the Earth about its axis is so large (212e27 Joules) it's difficult to put an every-day handle on it but it is equal to about 1 million Megawatt.years for every person on the Earth or about 450 million years of all human energy consumption at its current rate or 40,000 years worth of the solar radiation hitting the Earth.
However, tidal motion is not without some energy loss so very gradually the rotation of the Earth is slowing. Eventually we will, like the moon, have our day synchronised to the rotation of the Earth/moon system - but thankfully this will take a while.