[sonicl]

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The lights are going out in Iceland this week so people can gaze at the night sky.

Authorities in the capital Reykjavik will turn off street lights on Thursday evening and people are also being encouraged to sit in their houses in the dark, writer Andri Snaer Magnason said on Wednesday.

While the lights are out, an astronomer will describe the night sky over national radio.

"We have a very beautiful sky as soon as we turn off the lights," Magnason, who came up with the idea, told Reuters.
The event is part of a film festival taking place on the small north Atlantic island, which gets most of its electricity from abundant thermal energy.

The lights are due to go off at 10 p.m. (11:00 p.m. British time), about two hours after nightfall, for half an hour.

Magnason said the capital's population of around 250,000 might be able to see the Northern Lights, a flickering curtain of light often seen in northern climes which is caused by solar particles being caught in the Earth's magnetic field.

Two other Icelandic towns will also turn off their lights.

How cool?

[HaydenAsche]

Uncool. That's how cool.

[ploesj]

thats nice.. they should do that here too.. the sky looks orange.

[Savage Clone]

A good time for the lootin' and the rapin'.

Edit:
In all seriousness, this sounds really awesome.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

If there was ever a time to be in Iceland.

Actually, I'd love to visit Iceland.

[Inhuman]

I was waiting for a time to post this:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse....gi?u=astrology

[ricechex]

yeah, that's pretty cool. astronomy, i know little. it is a very tough subject to learn and grasp.. at least for me. i had a C in collecge but my professor was tough too.

[wax]

thats astrology, this thread is about astronomy.
i am completely uninterested in astrology.

astronomy on the other hand, and cosmology...... very interesting.
i dont know much about it, but i just started getting into it. reading and watching documentarys. very interesting indeed, but also extremely taxing as i paid absolutely no attention in physics class at school.

[Inhuman]

Originally Posted by wax

thats astrology, this thread is about astronomy.
i am completely uninterested in astrology.

astronomy on the other hand, and cosmology...... very interesting.
i dont know much about it, but i just started getting into it. reading and watching documentarys. very interesting indeed, but also extremely taxing as i paid absolutely no attention in physics class at school.

Oh, yet it does! It's about astrology as well as astronomy.

[ricechex]

Originally Posted by Inhuman

Oh, yet it does! It's about astrology as well as astronomy.

yep, yep.

[Rob Instigator]

that is the single coolest thing I have heard of civic wise in a looong loooong time

[Tokolosh]

 

Gods Eye
This is proof that astronomy doesn't suck at all. Beautiful Heh?

The image depicts the so-called Helix Nebula, described by astronomers as "a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases." At its center is a dying, Sun-like star which has ejected masses of dust and gas to form tentacle-like filaments stretching toward an outer rim composed of the same material. The Sun itself may look like this in several billion years.

Original Image Credit: NASA, WIYN, NOAO, ESA, Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), & T. A. Rector (NRAO).

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

That is beautiful. Now if We could get some metal plates in there and a big glass tube around it and hook it up to a transformer and some other electronics and connect that to giant speakers and change the laws of physics so that sound could travel through a vaccuum, then we'd be talking.


Astronomers themselves can bite my ass. Pluto not a planet. Sheesh. It is a spherical rock that rotates around the sun and even has a moon (well sort of, they revolve around eachother) it occasionally even has an atmosphere. Since there are other things out there, they should add those as planets too.

[Rob Instigator]

either everything is a planet or we have to decide what criteria make a planet since there are around 500 THOUSAND plus objects orbitting the sun.

pluto is a very very large comet basically. it wasn't a rock. it was a rock lobster!!!!
it is smaller than our moon.

[Hip Priest]

Originally Posted by sonicl

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The lights are going out in Iceland this week so people can gaze at the night sky.

Authorities in the capital Reykjavik will turn off street lights on Thursday evening and people are also being encouraged to sit in their houses in the dark, writer Andri Snaer Magnason said on Wednesday.

While the lights are out, an astronomer will describe the night sky over national radio.

"We have a very beautiful sky as soon as we turn off the lights," Magnason, who came up with the idea, told Reuters.
The event is part of a film festival taking place on the small north Atlantic island, which gets most of its electricity from abundant thermal energy.

The lights are due to go off at 10 p.m. (11:00 p.m. British time), about two hours after nightfall, for half an hour.

Magnason said the capital's population of around 250,000 might be able to see the Northern Lights, a flickering curtain of light often seen in northern climes which is caused by solar particles being caught in the Earth's magnetic field.

Two other Icelandic towns will also turn off their lights.

How cool?

That's a lovely thing to do. If you tried that here you'd just have the lefties screaming 'health and safety' and 'EU regulations' at you.

Astronomy is a great thing to have some interest in because it's very accessible and it's free at its most basic level. Every child should be encouraged to get involved in this kind of thing.

[Gulasch Noir]

What i like most about astronomy is the GIGANTOMANIE, for example

A supermassive black hole is a black hole with a mass in the range of a few times 105 to a few times 1010 (hundreds of thousands to tens of billions) of solar masses.

[Gulasch Noir]

not astronomy, but only gigantomanie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex

edit!
Since a googolplex is one followed by a googol zeroes, it would not be possible to write down or store a googolplex in decimal notation, even if all the matter in the known universe were converted into paper and ink or disk drives.

[Hip Priest]

Remember comet Hale-Bopp from 1997? Who can fail to be charged with a passion for astronomy when there's an event like that?

Comet Hale-Bopp

[Tokolosh]

One of the many things that amazes me to this day, is the fact that black holes can actually suck up light. Rays of light actually bend, on the way in.

[jon boy]

i am currently fascinated with palm reading.