I’ve always been in awe of the work done by Pamela and Fraser over at Astronomy Cast. It was a honour to be invited on as a guest a few months ago, and even more of an honour to be invited back.
You can listen to Pamela and I discussing the trials and tribulations of [...]
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Astronomy’s appeal is inextricably linked to the visual richness of the subject, but it’s not just images from professional observatories that take our breath away. Astrophotography with amateur telescopes is thriving like never before, as more and more people experiment with digital cameras, webcams and all the rest. We know from the Sky at Night [...]
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The new results from astronomers using two telescopes on Hawaii – NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility and the giant Keck telescope – which reveal the presence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars are enormously exciting. As far as we know, methane signals the presence of one of two things – either life or, more likely [...]
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I’m up in Tromso, northern Norway, filming the Northern Lights with the Sky at Night team. We need to dash out to make the most of the fleeting hours of twilight here in the Arctic circle, so I’ll write more later, but for now enjoy this picture from last night’s display. It was taken by [...]
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The UK is currently engaged in an effort to subvert the celebrations for the International Year of Astronomy. While we’re clearly in favour of IYA as a whole, it appears that far too much credit is being given to that notorious Italian, Galileo. Sure, he discovered the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, [...]
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Remember Phoenix’s discovery of snow on Mars?. In the last public talk of the AAS conference yesterday, Principal Investigator Peter Smith updated those of us who normally think about galaxies rather than planets on Phoenix’s mission and the analysis that’s underway. There wasn’t too much new to say, but he did let slip that late [...]
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An American Astronomical Society tradition is the party held on the Wednesday evening. I’m sorry to let you down by not bringing you all the gossip- what happens at the AAS party stays at the AAS party – but it’s reassuring to see that the lecture hall is busy this morning for the first talk [...]
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I think I made the lot of the sub-mm astronomer, working extremely hard just to identify blobs, sound pretty thankless earlier today. Strangely, I managed to do so without even complaining that the worst thing about using these short-wavelength radio waves is that most of them are absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere so unless you’re [...]
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It’s difficult, as someone who uses telescopes which work in the sub-mm – effectively short-wave radio – it’s difficult not to be jealous of optical astronomers, many of whom are busy in the exhibit hall giving out beautiful posters of their latest hits. Instead, we end up often with spectra, or at best with a [...]
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Those of you who didn’t spend the last few days up a mountain may have noticed that it’s no longer 2008, and is in fact 2009. Hopefully, it’s equally obvious that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, as designated by the United Nations.
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IYA is a big deal; whatever you’ve heard already is almost certainly [...]