Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with sky

Help me get my Sky TV working again.

Nufkin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:16:27 -0800

My Sky+ box only receives some channels, others now display a error 25 'No satellite signal is being received'. Sky want to send an engineer at a cost of £65. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Some channels (like Sky 1) show perfectly; others, such as channel 4 are intermittent; some I can't get at all (all flavours of BBC).

What can I do to try and fix this?

Strange Light in Sky

dearleader — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:02:07 -0800

Strange one here... but just looking out my Brooklyn window, saw light in eastern-ish sky, very bright, almost as if a spotlight was coming down, then the source of it seem to dissipate, and then the "cloud" itself dissipated shortly thereafter. Any astronomy news tonight of any sort? Or something else? Or did anyone else happen to see anything?

Ruskin quote filter

slipperywhenwet — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:15:25 -0800

"The Sky is in all ways suited to entertain." Or something like that. I believe John Ruskin said/wrote something to this effect. Anyone have the exact quote? I remember the quote itself being several lines, something along the lines of "the sky is awesome yadda yadda yadda I love to watch the clouds yadda yadda yadda really who would ever want for any better entertainment &c."

Only he wrote it classier.

Weird Star?

bmalicoat — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:01:03 -0800

AstronomyFilter: What was that crazy thing I saw in the sky? So I was camping with some friends in Wilderness State Park very near the Mackinaw Bridge in Michigan. On a very clear night we were all looking up at the stars watching for shooting stars and such. At one point my friend saw something moving incredibly, almost imperceptibly, slow. We followed it for quite some time and could easily tell it was moving based on a few reference stars that it was getting closer to or farther from. Eventually it seemed to stop moving and then slowly move in a different direction. It didn't move back the way it came from instead it sort of moved down with respect to the way we were looking, when before it was moving diagonally up and to the right. All this movement/stopping/movement again happened in the span of less than 10 minutes. What could it have been?

Lights in the sky

Tarn — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:10:19 -0800

When I look into the sky, I can see small, brilliant points of light darting around. What are they?

Is the sun sunnier in southern skies?

vizsla — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:28:55 -0800

Is it true that the skies in the Southern Hemisphere appear brighter and clearer than Northern Hemisphere skies? I have read this several times from various unscientific sources. If so, what is the reason?

Dark skies in western Washington

0xFCAF — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:39:01 -0800

Where can I find some truly dark skies in western Washington state? My fondest childhood memory is sitting out on my relatives' farm in who-knows-where-South Dakota, staring up at a surrealistically bright Milky Way. These days I live in the Seattle area and it's a pretty rare sight to see more than a few stars.

But I now have 9 days of vacation, a week of what appears to be good weather, and a willingness to drive 6+ hours to get to a good place to see the night sky as I remember it (or something close). What are some actual locations (i.e. names, places, parks, whatever) with great stargazing? I'm also willing to do a strenuous hike if that's needed - pretty much anything is in. Bonus points if I can camp out in a bivy sack in said location.

Pre-emptive: The Dark Sky Finder applet is next to worthless - without roads or any other information about how to get there, all it really does it tell me that it's bright where I am (which I already knew).

The sky is falling…

kmadd — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:20:56 -0800

(Two part question: part 1 – help me find a reference, part 2 – am I crazy?) I know I have read somewhere that on rare occasions fish and frogs can be dragged from their watery residences by waterspouts and deposited miles away. There are many references on the web referring to this type of phenomena, but there is a particularly extreme example which I seek… The reference that I recall includes the story of a jet that lost an engine due to inhaling a small animal and loosing the engine. When the residue was gathered from the engine in question, the animal which the plane hit at altitude was confirmed to be a small non-flying mammal (squirrel?). Has anyone ever heard of this particularly extreme case of flightless animals at high altitude?

The reason for my sudden interest in this topic is due to a rather strange guest in my yard over the most recent weekend. Sunday morning, after an unusually heavy summer storm (the patio furniture was knocked over for the first time in years) I awoke to let the dogs out, and when I went to let them in and one had a rather large turtle in her mouth (dead).

This was unusual for a number of reasons…

The turtle did not appear to be a terrestrial turtle, such as those commonly kept as pets (Mud or Box). I have had pet turtles as a child and would recognize a familiar species.

The turtle was large enough (7”-8” L, 5”W) that it would have been impossible for it to gain entry through my cedar privacy fence without going over or under it. Which I’m sure a turtle cannot do on its own power. The turtle was also of a size that I have never seen from an aquatic pet turtle. Only in the wild have I seen a turtle of this size.

The turtle shell was partially broken/cracked near one edge, which may have been the dog’s doing, but she is almost never rough with things that are already dead and I doubt that she would try to tear through something so hard. This suggests that there was some forceful impact involved with the turtle entering my yard.

Access to my yard is very limited; from the street side, there is no way someone could have thrown the turtle into the dog area of the property, plain and simple. The fence in the rear is surrounded by neighboring properties, consisting of mostly elderly folks and one young couple, so it is highly unlikely that that a neighbor chucked it over.

I do not live very close to water, or at least far enough that a turtle could have strolled over. There is a small branch of the Chicago river about a mile away, the North Branch of the Chicago river is about three miles away and the Des Plaines river is about three miles in another direction. There are several small lakes and man made bodies of water within a few miles, but none are within a mile and all have obstacles such as train tracks, major streets and bridges that would need to be overcome. I would be hard-pressed to walk directly to a nearby body of water without getting killed and I look both ways.

Am I crazy or did this turtle fall form the sky?

Does this happen with any frequency?

Opinions, thoughts and any personal experiences are appreciated.

Home Cinema System??

spinko — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 09:12:16 -0800

Home Cinema Question: Im looking to get a HCS for my Sky HD box. I want it to connect to my SKY HD, Xbox360 and Future PS3. Anyone recommend anything? Needs to be based in England for delivery.

Got my eye on
SONY HT-SF1100 Home Cinema System its £259.
This has 2 HTMI inputs and 1 output to TV.

Can you recommend better, budget is £500 max.

Sky HD: HDMI
Xbox 360: Component
PS3: HDMI
DVD Player: Scart

How to replace my Sky Plus box?

salmacis — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 05:39:05 -0800

How do I replace my Sky Plus box? I'm in the UK. For reasons of price I've decided to ditch Sky Plus. Since I already get my broadband from Virgin Media (formerly ntl) I can get a TV package with them for virtually no extra money. One thing I am going to miss though is the easy recording with Sky Plus. Virgin Media have a Sky Plus-type box which apparently has the same function, but it's £15 a month, which I will not pay. (Does the VM box work as well as Sky Plus anyway?)

What alternatives are there? I could go the old route and hook up my old VCR, but there must be a better way in this day and age. All hard disk recorders seem to have Freeview built in. Are there any which will work with cable? Is a DVD recorder going to fitthe bill? Failing that, is it possible to build a bare-bones system myself, and if so, where should I start?

Please do not asnwer this question if you're not in the UK and do not know about UK broadcasting or what boxes are available here.

What channels am I actually going to watch?

sueinnyc — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:32:27 -0800

UKTVFilter: Help me pick the channels I’ll actually watch! I am about to move into my first UK apartment, having most recently lived in New York, and I need to arrange for TV service. I gather that Sky is my best bet (although I welcome comments on that assumption, too); I understand that the apartment is already wired (if that’s the right word) for Sky.

When I go to the Sky website, I am faced with a dizzying array of channels and packages, including digital and HD – but I don’t know enough about most of them to know what I’ll want. So, dear hive mind, please tell me your thoughts as to what I should be picking, and particularly whether the HD option is going to give me additional channels that I’ll watch.

To help with this question: I will be buying a new TV that is HD-ready, and I would like to watch movies and mainstream TV shows in HD wherever possible. I definitely want digital TV. Back in New York (when I didn’t have much time to watch TV), I mostly watched NY1, the major networks, BBC America, Showtime and Logo. I like documentaries and dramas and shows like Lost.

(Yes, I know I need a TV license as well.)

Thanks in advance.

How common are shooting stars?

orangeshoe — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:58:19 -0800

Is it possible to see random shooting stars, or am I crazy? Within the past three nights, I think I've seen two shooting stars. Two random times I happened to look up at the sky I could have sworn I saw one. But they were both gone so fast that I completely doubt that it happened. Kind of like what you could have sworn was a mouse dart across a New York City apartment, until it is gone in a flash.

Am I seeing things or can these have really been shooting stars? This question may sound very elementary, but the thing is, I'm not sure if I've ever seen something like that before (except for meteor showers, which is different).

Are they so common that I could have actually seen two in the course of three nights? Is this a figment of my imagination? Or did I luck out in seeing them?

The Magic of the Big Sky

nixerman — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 08:27:45 -0800

Origins of the phrase "Big Sky"? Was it first used to describe Montana? Might it have Native American origins?

My guide to the visible night sky?

porpoise — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 21:40:54 -0800

Observational astronomy aids in Palm OS 3 format? "Current viewable at this location and time" information about satellites a huge plus. Are there any extant programs that will run on a PalmOS3(?) Sony CLIE that will allow one to;

- select lat/long
- let the program query the internal clock instead of punching in the time
- filter 'viewable objects' by magnitude (I'm a victim of light pollution)
- have (updated/updateable?) information on satellites (esp. the ISS and the Iridium comsats)

Not just another free photo question (well, OK, just another free photo question)

blueshammer — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:02:44 -0800

I'm looking for a very high-rez photo of a cloudy sky, something along these lines. I need to enlarge it to about 2'x1', and I understand that any raw digital image is likely to have to be manipulated to become that large, but if I can find a source with few or no compression artifacts, I can live with the rest. But I'm certain clip art sites, pay or free, aren't going to quite have it (and I'm big on free). Are there atmospheric sites, government or academic, that might have some really large sky photos?

Should we redeam our skymiles right away?

monsta coty scott — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 21:46:43 -0800

With Delta Airlines on the brink of bankruptcy, how much longer are my skymiles of any value? My wife and I have accrued enough sky miles to fly both of us to Hawaii for a nice vacation. We were hoping to be able to do this next May. But with the predictions of Delta heading towards a Chapter 11 bankruptcy I wonder if our miles will be of no use by then. Would we be better off redeaming our miles for a less fanciful vacation and go somewhere right away, or hold out in hopes of going somewhere nice next spring?

No moon at night, everyone take flight!

wackybrit — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:23:20 -0800

What could obscure the moon temporarily at night? The ghost thread reminded me of this weird event, and I wondered if you clever folk might be able to speculate.. [mi] Back in the late '80s (or possibly very early '90s), when I was a kid, me, my father, and my uncle were left on our own in a vacation caravan sitting around looking at the moon. Suddenly there was a 'notch' in the left side of the moon. Then, over about 2 minutes, a black square with perfectly straight sides and sharp corners moved across the moon and off the right side. By the time my uncle got his antique camcorder, it was over. We reported it anyway, without incident.

If it wasn't such a perfect square, this wouldn't even be a question. It could have been a cloud or a plane. But a perfect square that took a couple of minutes to cut across the moon seen by three people.. am I missing something, what could it have been? A satellite of some sort? An experimental jet? Or just another one of those inexplicable things? This is certainly not in our imaginations as all three of us saw it, and I even remember it well, despite being a kid at the time.