www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

being a bit of a naked eye sky gazer myself i have watched most of the yearly meteor showers. Apparently the leonids are due to be good in November this year. and like other people on here i thought i had my own UFO moment about 12 years ago. i saw a bight light appear and then disappear, then it happened again. I thought i was going mad. But it turned out to be one of the irridium network of satellites (irridium flare they called it) not a natural phenomena but spooked the hell out of me. Since then I have seen many more, the MIR space station before it came down and these days the international space station. But i will say if you stand out and look up often enough you will see a shooting star. They are more frequent than people think. and having moved from West London down to Dorset the sky has got a lot darker ) Don't know if it has been mentioned on the forum before but a good website is www.heavens-above.com

and one mind boggling fact on there is voyager 1 is 109 x 149,597,870 km away from earth and still working. I still can't get my head round those distances.

Chris

and one mind boggling fact on there is voyager 1 is 109 x 149,597,870 km away from earth and still working. I still can't get my head round those distances.

... compare and contrast with the fact that, here on Earth, it seems impossible to get a mobile phone to work a mere handful of miles from Cambridge during the evening, as there's no signal available. I can't get my head around this either

Trev

Mine worked fine in the middle of Lake Victoria in Uganda

Going over the mountains towards Bala, your right on top of the moors, there is nothing blocking the signal you can see for miles so why is there no signal, it give me the creeps your miles from even the nearest farm house so if you break down ugh, the phone is dead, why

I think a lot of rural areas like that are accepted as bad in this country. You only have to look at phone websites to see their signal strength maps to see that Wales is bad in general. We were in Snowdonia for new year and a lot of the area was bad so we didn't bother with phones. Exmoor too last summer. There are some places here in the very open marshland (not even a hill for miles) where there is no signal. It can be handy for camera club and natural history group meetings as I don't have to remember to turn my phone off as there's no signal anyway lol. Even in my house I have signal upstairs but often not downstairs... and we are the highest point for miles around.

Whereas fishing around a group of islands in the middle of Lake Victoria in Uganda (approx 50 miles from the shore) for a few days we had perfect signal every day!

Chris Pickford wrote:
Despite being a sceptic (scientist by training and profession), I do have to admit to having had a very serious UFO experience.....I have certainly never managed to find a convincing explanation! As for alien abductions, well, they never seem to take the right people, do they?

Chris

Would you mind sharing a bit more of your UFO experience Chris ?

Charles


Charles, better off-forum, or the men in white coats will descend for both of us........(chris.pickford@tiscali.co.uk). Chris

As I am an an anti-social smoker, I spend a bit of time outside in my garden most evenings....
..and see quite a few shooting stars, perhaps one or two a month - more around November, when you may see several in the space of a few minutes....

So, Pete, you would see a lot more shooting stars if you were a smoker, is all I can say!
N

Astronomy is another of my favourite subjects and I always like watching for meteors. One evening when there is one of the annual meteor showers you should sit outside and take a look Pete, the geminids are one of my favourite and I saw 45 in a few hours in 2007.