‘Latest News’ Archives
No visible 10km Plume from LCROSS impact
According to NASA TV there was no significant visible plume from the impact of the spacecraft. There is good spectographic data and it does show Sodium a cause for some excitement as it wasn't expected. Regarding the spectorgraphic data, they are being cautiously optimistic despite the lack of a visible plume, but they point blank refused [...]
How to “Rent” a Telescope for online observation
Recently I was wondering how to see deeper into the night sky than was possible using my own Telescope. I had heard that it was possible to "rent" time on a Telescope so I decided to look into it and see what I could find. Ignoring some of the static webcams out there I was looking for something that would help me see something interesting and [...]
Watch LCROSS hit the moon live on NASA TV
If you are in Ireland (or Europe) you won't be able to pull out a telescope and see the lunar impact live. The event starts about 12:15 lunchtime GMT. BUT you can see it live on NASA TV. So dont miss it ! Oh and make a copy in case they lose this footage too... For details on when its going to happen you can check out the Countdown
Telescopes on Twitter
Twitter is trivial, annoying and pointless. Really? I suppose you have to figure out what it might be good for. For me, the idea that you can have SMS style news feeds from Spacecrafts and Telescopes is pretty amazing.
Using Satellites to check the cloud cover
So how do you check for cloud cover using an IR Satellite image? Turns out there are many satellites beaming information back to earth which is accessible via the internet. A great use for these images is to check the viewing conditions for viewing the stars. I've done a few searches and came up a website which stays reasonably up to [...]
Astonomy Picture of the day – Lagoon Nebula
Cool image of the Lagoon Nebula. Taken as part of the GigaGalaxyZoom Project.
Life after Hubble?
I recently blogged that the absense of Hubble would leave a huge gap in astrophography which didn't seem likely to be filled anytime soon. NASA however just released this amazing photo of M31 (Andromeda galaxy to most of us) showing over 20,000 UV light sources.The image was taken by the SWIFT spacecraft which was launched in 2004. It is the [...]
A Swift view of Andromeda
A Swift view of Andromeda Posted using ShareThis
Rocky World COROT-7b Rains Rocks | Universe Today
Rocky World COROT-7b Rains Rocks | Universe Today Posted using ShareThis
Sputnik launched on this day, Oct 1957
Sputnik launched on October 4th 1957. The space race began ...
How to set up your own astronomy blog…Part 1
For those who used to spend lots of time writing HTML back in 90s, it may be hard to accept just how much has changed since then. Writing a "website" is not at all the same experience. Twitter , RSS, Wordpress, Facebook, Digg, Podcast, you name it, there is plenty of web 2.0/social networking going on, and it can be hard to navigate this new [...]
Astrophography…
Ok, so one of the reasons I got into writing a blog was to start looking and imaging the sky. Now there is NO WAY I can beat the hubble photos, I have a 6" Meade telescope, I live in a city, and I'm new to this.... not a great start! However I'm going to give it a go. First target is Jupiter. If you have taken pictures please let me know. I plan [...]