Thomas

I was just looking at Saturn, through my Skywatcher Heritage 76 with a TMB Planetary 6mm eyepiece giving 50x, and saw pretty clearly a fine dark line across the planet, probably about along its equator. I thought it might be the ring shadows, but I checked and they aren't visible at the moment.

So was this a real feature on Saturn, or my eyes or telescope playing tricks on me? (It's a pretty cheap and small telescope after all.)

The lineup of Intel's latest "Skylake" processors has been announced, expanding beyond the initial 6600K and 6700K to a range of Pentium and Core i3/i5/i7 processors. But when are those actually expected on sale? I can't find dates anywhere.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/skylake-for...

Some of the quad-core processors are listed as having quad-core turbo higher than their base frequency. But I thought the whole idea of turbo was that it would up the speed when only some cores are in use. So how does the speed get turbo-ed when ALL the cores are in us?

I'm having real trouble just finding Latias in Pokemon Emerald. After doing the thing picking the colour with the TV, I've put a level 35 Pokemon in the lead slot and am using Super Repels and running around Hoenn. But I've been searching for over an hour and no Latias encounter. Is there some trick to finding it?

(Once I find it I'll just throw my Master Ball, so there'll be no worries on the actual catching.)

The Fukushima Daiichi disaster was caused by the reactors losing cooling because the backup generators were flooded by the tsunami.

Since the earthquake and tsunami risks were well known, why were the backup generators located at ground level, and not high up on an earthquake resistant structure, such as the very containment buildings that housed the reactors?

I've been looking into credit unions in my town and there are a couple in my area that look good. Is it best to join both and spread my money between them, or stick to just one? Looking to put in about £200 total to start, and more interesting in building a relationship and eligibility for loans in future than in a return on investment.

The two:

http://www.advancecu.org.uk/

http://www.citysave.org.uk/

The angular resolution of a telescope depends on the width of its objective lense or main mirror. if you want to see more detail you need a bigger lens/mirror, no two ways about it.

So why do microscopes have such tiny objective lenses?

I'm going to be buying something that'll be paid for every year and is priced in US Dollars, whereas I live in Britain. Does the USD/GBP exchange rate show any yearly cycle that would mean it's best for me to buy this at a certain month?

How can I put software on a Windows 7 DVD? I want to be able to install Windows 7 and have Firefox, Chrome, and other programs automatically installed without having to do them afterwards. I've done this for Windows XP from the guide here, http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/ , but never for Vista or 7.

I know there's disk imaging but my company has too many different model computers for this to be much good. We have a volume licensing agreement so I am allowed to make custom install media.

I was looking for M1 (the Crab Nebula) through my 15x70 binoculars, observing from Birmingham at around 02:30 (British time) on the 13th September. With the field of view where the nebula is I saw two brief stationary flashes of light. The first was white and about 3rd magnitude I think (magnitude from memory so take it with a pinch of salt). The second a minute or two later, about a degree lower, distinctly greenish and more like 6th magnitude. (Neither, incidentally, was in the exact position of the nebula, which I didn't see.)

I think the brief duration and lack of any motion rules out a satellite. The duration's right for a head-on meteor, but is no observed motion even at 15x magnification likely? The greenish tint to the second looked like aircraft lights, but a nearby aircraft would be visible to the naked eye and I'd normally see the body through binoculars, neither of which were the case, while a distant aircraft would have too slow an apparent motion to see just one flash of its lights as it passed through the field. Thus I don't think a normal aeroplane is likely.

Anything else it might have been?

It's really annoying with all this nonsense cluttering up the astronomy section.

These little packs of silica gel often come in packaging, saying "Do Not Eat - Throw Away - Desiccant". Which got me wondering, what would happen if you ate it?

I need a free program for Windows that will check the performance of a computer, to help me pinpoint the cause of a computer running slower than it should be. Sort of like a benchmark program, only I don't need the fine precision to split small differences between hardware, I just want something fairly quick to run that will indicate whether performance is in the right ballpark. Running without installation would be a boon.

Anyone got any ideas?

I'm trying to catch Pinsir, Tauros, Kangaskhan, and Chansey in the Safari Zone in Pokemon Leaf Green. What's the best approach for each of them: bait, rocks, or just throw balls straight away?

What RGB colour (like a hexadecimal colour code say) is the best match for the Hydrogen Alpha wavelength? Ha is a very deep red and actually outside the sRGB gamut, so it can't be represented exactly. I'm thinking maybe a dark red, with no blue or green. Maybe someone else has tried to display it on computer before?

This is the one with the funny bowling ball mount. I've seen it pretty cheap second-hand a couple of times, but have had trouble finding out much about it.

Specifically, I need to make something like these, http://www.eyesonthesky.com/frugaldiy/dobfractor1.... and http://www.homebuiltastronomy.com/kidpeek/index.ht... , to put a small telescope on that's lost its original mount.

If our current best telescopes (Hubble, Keck, etc) were in space and looked at the night side of Earth, how far could it be and still be able to pick up our city lights?

What about a really huge telescope, say a mile wide objective, that an alien civilisation might build?