It is cold, overcast, I am homebound and I cannot use my telescope. I could sure use some astronomy humor. Jokes, anecdotes and graphics are welcome here....

How many astronomers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None! Who the heck wants a light on, it will ruin the viewing.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

--- link removed on complaint/request ---

Should take a while to read it all

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Mars Society.

A true story from Screenwriters' Camp:
My friend asked me to turn on the TV in our dorm. It was broken, so all we saw was gray and white static.

"Oooh, the Cosmic Background Radiation channel!" I shouted. My friend didn't get it. Not all writers are nerds, sadly.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

(This one is my translation of a German joke. So bear with me if the payoff is lost)

Two planets happen to meet in space. “You´re looking pale”, says planet 1. “Yes”, says planet 2. “I became infected with Homo Sapiens”. Planet 2: “Me too. Don´t worry too much. It passed off quickly”

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If everyone had even a basic grasp of scientific principles, this planet would be a better place (Phil Plait)

Die Lücke, die wir hinterlassen, ersetzt uns vollkommen [The gap we will leave behind will take our place entirely] (Carl Heinz Schroth)

1 + e^i*pi = 0

My only spoonerism, so far:
I was working on something when my brother asked me why astronauts have to be good at math. Being distracted, I told him:
"Going to Math takes lots of Mars."

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

That is definitely inside humor that would only work amongst astronomers and physicists. Good one though.

Hmm. Out in the campgrounds an amateur astronomer and his wife woke up in their sleeping bags in the middle of the night.

The wife said "Wow look I can see the stars!"

"Yes," said the husband "It is incredible how many stars we can see out here in the country with no light pollution. You can see the Milky way and even all of the Messier Objects with the naked eye."

Wife: "Forget about all that, who stole our tent?"

Found some errors in this part.

# Top Ten Technical Errors/Anachronisms in the Movie "Apollo 13"

Compiled by a bunch of genuine NASA dweebs who actually noticed these things.

Not dweebs. NASA space buffs.

* The NASA "worm" logo appears on a glass door.
The logo was not developed until 1976.

* One engineer checks an astronaut's addition using a slide rule.
Slide rules are not used for addition.

* Jim Lovell's license plate is new.

* The astronauts point out the Sea of Tranquility while on the dark side of the moon.
It is on the other side.

Wrong. The Sea of Tranquility can also be on the dark side of the moon. Perhaps they pointed it out on the far side of the moon

* A technician at the cape is wearing a Rockwell International logo on his coveralls.
The Apollo capsule was built by North American, which did not become Rockwell International until after the Apollo program.

Wrong. During the moon flights the company was known as North American Rockwell. It later changed it's name to Rockwell International prior to the ASTP flight in 1975.

* The gantry arms for the Saturn V are released in unison, not one at a time.

* During entry, the spacecraft is shown hurling directly at the earth. At that angle, it would punch a brief but fiery hole through the atmosphere.
It should be aiming towards the horizon.

* The paint pattern on the Saturn V is for the test configuration, not the launch configuration.

Specifically, there was a block type roll pattern on the S-IVB stage in the movie. Flight stages had a solid black band. The S1C stage showed a roll pattern on the intertank. Filght models had the intertank painted white.

The movie Saturn V had the paint pattern of the facilities mockup Saturn that was used in 1967.

* The astronauts look at their intended landing site while on the dark side of the moon.

Again, this should say the "far" side of the Moon

It is a good thing they didn't land - no communications with Earth, it's dark and very cold.

It can get dark and cold on the near side, too

AND THE NUMBER ONE TECHNICAL ERROR/ANACHRONISM in APOLLO 13 is:

* In space, from outside the capsule, propulsion jets do not make any noise.

Sound does not transmit in a vacuum. But you could hear them inside the spacecraft, which was pressurized at 5 p.s.i.

I could do addition on my slide rule, but it had an L scale. There are ways to do addtion with C and D scales. 'Course, anybody who was half-way competent with a slide rule could do the addition in their head, faster.

My favorite Feynman astronomy joke was that we shouldn't be calling very large numbers "astronomical" anymore, we should call them "economical".

Objection! I'm neither, and it still made me laugh.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

Not astro, but physics (or chemistry) humor:

Two atoms are walking along, and one says, "I just lost an electron!" To which the other asks, "are you sure?" "I'm positive!" replied the first.


A neutron walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender brings him one, and the neutron asks him how much it costs. "For you, no charge."


Nick

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--
Nick Theodorakis

Home Improvement had an episode where the actual crew of Hubble Servicing Mission 1 guest-starred and their were a few very funny bits:

Tim: "I'm going into space!"
His wife: "How soon can you leave?"

Tim: "What's it like working with tools in space?"
Mission Specialist: "It's a lot like working with tools on Earth, except you don't have to worry about dropping anything on your foot."
Al: "Gee, sounds like the perfect place for you, Tim."

And then there was a bit where the crew all introduced themselves and Tim made jokes about their names. These were the only two I remember:

Ken Bowersox: "They call me 'sox' for short."
Tim: "Is that because you never change your socks when you're in space?"

Tim: "What's the story, Story?"
Story Musgrave: "Gee, never heard that one before."

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Typical woman: makes you guess what she thinks instead of just saying it.

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"A Paradox may be Paradoctored"
Robert Anson Heinlein, All You Zombies, 1958

How do astronauts loose weight? Fly to the moon.

Not necessarily a joke, but a great line from my favorite movie, "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home."

Gillian (20th century whale biologist, to Captain Kirk, in 1986): Let me guess. You're from outer space.

Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.

Gillian: I knew outer space would come into the picture.

i thought that whole movie was somewhat of a joke: and not only because of all the jokes about the crew being in a different time than their own.

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

"The Martian Child", Magazine of Fantasy & Science September 1994

Trekkies never understood that the whole thing was a sitcom. Look at the evidence

• a sexist, womanizing skipper chasing skirts irrespective of age or species
• a first officer with "straight man" stamped all over his face
• a grouchy(sic!) doctor whose diagnostic expertise consists of "[insert proper pronoun]'s dead, Jim", never missing an opportunity to wave his salt shaker in the general direction of his victims
• a crew comprising every ethnic stereotype known to western civilization
• the redshirt running gag
• last but not least a parody of the Soviet Union not even the CPSU took seriously

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"A Paradox may be Paradoctored"
Robert Anson Heinlein, All You Zombies, 1958

I’m not an astronomer or a physicist but I still got it.

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Did You Know?

Random Fact: Pell’s equation

Although, that Home Improvement episode did make me realize just how many astronauts have really strange names. I guess it makes it easier for the press to remember your name.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

maybe they just come from strange families or strange areas, and thus the strange names..
i drive thru the home town of astronaut Karen Nyberg on a daily basis (Vining, MN pop. 65) and live in the town where she went to school (Henning, MN pop 750). her name might be "normal" and i don't know much about her or her family life, but her dad likes to make scrap iron statues which are displayed all over the town of Vining. these aren't normal statues- there is an alien holding up a flower next to an astronaut, a giant foot with a HUGE big toe, a life size elephant, and a bunch of other crazy stuff.. and i can say from experience that the people in general are a little bit "different" around here.
maybe the people that make the best astronauts all come from "weird" places like this, and as such, they grow up seeing things different than us "normal" people, which gives them some sort of an advantage for careers in zero g.

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

I would say that's probably a good theory.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Something I wrote on another forum that's sort of funny:

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Finally, somewhere I can tell this joke and actually get a giggle!

A neutron walks into a bar and asks "How much for a drink here anyway?" To which the bartender replied "For you? No charge."

I laughed...

Nowhere Man came up with this:

Johannes Kepler: My boss, Tycho Brahe, has a golden nose.

Kepler's Friend: A golden nose? How does he smell?

Johannes Kepler: Terrible!

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I tried not to post, but it was stronger than me: This joke stinks!

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"A Paradox may be Paradoctored"
Robert Anson Heinlein, All You Zombies, 1958

I actually stole it from a friend of mine, who works at Fermi and is a NASA solar system ambassador. He gives astronomy talks at midwest SF cons. If you saw the FNAL pajama party for CERN, he's the one wearing the PJs with the rad symbols all over them.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Now, that is something to put on your resume.

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"A Paradox may be Paradoctored"
Robert Anson Heinlein, All You Zombies, 1958

haha they are all amusing jokes :]

An old Russian joke I read somewhere:

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..."

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek