Billions of habital planets in Milky Way

[Simpo Two]

Derek Smith said:

Next one in the sequence:

11 - 8 - 16 - 7 - ?

You could make a case for 21 though.

Derek Smith said:

Som out of the teams only one got both and only one other got one. I was not popular, but that's normal.

Well that's the idea of a knockout - if they all get every question there is no winner

You'd have to be a photographer to get the aperture one but that's the whole point of general knowledge. It might have been about gardening, or cheese.

[MartG]

Planetary distance from the Sun in AU ?

[Derek Smith]

Liked the AU question. I'll nick that one.

Other ones that caused problems.

First English captain to tour Australia? Clue: from Yorkshire.

What was Instanbul originally called?

[MartG]

Captain Cook, and Constantinople ( and no, I didn't use Google )

[Eric Mc]

Instantbul?

Sounds like a good description of anything spoken by Ed Balls.

[Simpo Two]

MartG said:

Captain Cook

[AshVX220]

I have a question relating to the previous pages questions (and appreciating this is way off topic).

What's the difference between Geo-stationary and geo-synchronous?

As I understand it, Geo-Stationary means the satellite remains fixed above a specific point on Earth, does geo-Synchronous means it orbits at the same rate the Earth spins? If so, then surely, by default, it'll stay above the same point on Earth and there be Geo-Stationary or does it mean the lat stays the same, but the Longitude "wobbles"?

[Eric Mc]

I've always though that they mean the same thing.

[Eric Mc]

Aha - there IS a difference.

[AshVX220]

Bedazzled said:

Good explanation here.

It's interesting their definition of geosynchronous specifies a low inclination orbit, I think in theory you could also have a polar geosynchronous orbit at 90 degrees, but I guess it wouldn't be very useful to spy satellites.

Thank you, so my guess was right (except I got my Lat/Long mixed up).

[wormburner]

AshVX220 said:

Thank you, so my guess was right (except I got my Lat/Long mixed up).

Latitude flatitude!

[Eric Mc]

Longitude, wrongitude.

[jmorgan]

The Russians use a fun orbit for some comms stuff.

[MartG]

Bedazzled said:

I think in theory you could also have a polar geosynchronous orbit at 90 degrees, but I guess it wouldn't be very useful to spy satellites.

A polar synchronous orbit wouldn't stay in one spot in the sky, but would pass over the same lines of longitude each orbit ( if it didn't hit any of the equatorial synchronous orbit satellites as it crossed their path twice each orbit ).

Spy satellites in polar orbit tend to be in a sun synchronous orbit, so they pass over at the same time every day - as it removes the possibility of different lighting conditions as the sun will always be in the same place, it makes it easier to spot anything that has chaged on the ground

[wormburner]

How are collisions prevented? Or do they just work on the principle of them being hugely unlikely?