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Some Moon stuff
By which I don’t just mean our Moon, but various moons through the solar system, some of which have been in the spotlight. Starting out at both Saturn and Earth – and the two are united in having Moons...
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Some timelapse videos
I seem to be collecting these things today… sped up videos of various things to see in the sky. First off, as the night draws in, a thin crescent Moon heads for the horizon in the west in this recent...
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Space probe recreated in Lego
In order to help students visualise the challenges and mission of the comet chasing Rosetta probe, a version of the device has been created using the computerised Lego Mindstorms system. This high tech...
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Space probe roundup
There’s a few probes out there, gathering data in the solar system, so starting from the inner planets, today’s news includes: Venus Express has been watching a vortex playing in the atmosphere above...
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Dance of the planets in the dust
Spotting exoplanets is very hard to do directly. The best bet is to find an indirect method, such as the amount of light they block from their host star, the gravitational lens they produce as they...
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Quick Observing report
The cold air tonight reminded me that there actually sometimes is a starry sky above my head. Seeing the clear, star pricked night, I assembled the Celestron 130SLT and eyepieces and quickly set it up...
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Some observing alerts
Jupiter remains king in the sky at the moment, as Will Gater’s image, showing a transit of Io shortly after my own observations of it, illustrates: That black dot is the shadow of the satellite, a vast...
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Icy happenings out there
An animation of Comet Hartley 2 (which can be found via this chart) has been doing the rounds. No idea of attribution, although it’s on a website hosted by Patrick Wiggins, but this shows the comet...
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Pan-STARRS spots hazard in space
The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, or Pan-STARRS 1, is a 1.8 metre telescope with a 1.4 gigapixel camera mounted on it, constantly surveying the sky. It hunts stars, galaxies and...
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The skies over Kendal in October
We’re moving into the darker, colder and usually rather cloudy nights of the end of the year. As ever, this post is illustrated with a few sky charts showing midnight on the first, last and fifteenth...
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