ASTRO-HUMOUR IN 2024 WITH ADRIAN BRUNO SONKA
By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
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Containing nice and
hot stars, the Universe should
rather be joyous!
(Andrei Dorian Gheorghe)
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It is impossible for me to properly describe the articles on the blog of the coordinator of the Bucharest Municipal Observatory, Adrian Sonka (former secretary general of SARM), in which he presents technical details, astrophotographs, graphical representations and up-to-date animations about astronomical phenomena, all wrapped in an irresistible sense of humour, often close of poetry. So I limited myself to extracting only some short quotes from those published by him in 2024.
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EXCERPTS FROM ADRIAN BRUNO SONKA’S ARTICLES IN 2024
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-Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is getting more beautiful, which in the world of comets means bright and with many tails.
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-It is clearly visible how “the golden hour” appears on the Moon: only the tops of the rocks and the edges of the craters are visible.
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-Sometimes observational astronomy is easy, sometimes it is hard, but most of the time it is very hard.
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-In fact, the asteroid Ganymede is more dangerous to Mars than to Earth. In 2176, on December 16, it will come within just 4 million km of the red planet. If you suffer from asteroidophobia, you won't get rid of it even on Mars.
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-Right now a comet is coming our way, but luckily for it, it won't collide with Earth.
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-I'm sorry to be the one to inform you. Everything has an end: your phone battery, your salary, your happiness, your sadness, and even your life. Even the Sun, an object almost as important as the salary, will come to an end.
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-The pictures are nice, but it’s not good when (in them) the asteroids get into star-rich areas because you can’t measure their brightness properly. I leave you with a good wish, which you can always say to your relatives, friends and astronomers: “I wish that your asteroids never enter the Milky Way!”
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-That way we will also be able to stay calm. The existence of planets near stars that swelled up like the Sun (in the future) shows us that Jupiter and Saturn will not evaporate, they will not suffer anything. Future generations will be able to move quietly to Jupiter and Saturn. I calculated. Considering that a generation lasts 30 years, your 233,000,000th generation grandchild will live peacefully on Saturn!
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-Fortunately none of the 36,000 asteroids approaching our planet’s orbit will collide with our planet in the near future. We are therefore left with only one fear, a primordial one, the unknown. The most dangerous asteroids are those that have not yet been discovered and are on their way to your neighborhood.
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-WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is a missed star or an overachieving planet. It’s either the coolest brown dwarf, or it’s a planet that got kicked out of its system and is now wandering through space alone.
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- Brothers, why is the Moon visible? Where does she get light from? Of course the Moon has no light of her own, because otherwise our natural satellite would not always have a dark hemisphere. Moonlight comes from the Sun, and if the Moon turns blue, it means the Sun has turned blue.
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-We will experience a Moon-Neptune occultation, visible only through astronomical instruments. Those without instruments can look toward the Moon and imagine that Neptune is in the same direction.
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-Astronomer’s curse: let an asteroid enter your geostationary ring!
#poetry