As it’s Halloween, we examine the life and works of HP Lovecraft, author of horror classics including The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth. How did his lifelong interest in astronomy influence his work? Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is praised as one of the twentieth century’s most influential Read more
The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope brings us new face-on portraits of six spiral galaxies. But what is the science behind these delightful images? Everyone loves stunning pictures of spiral galaxies, I have said this before and will no doubt say it again. The folks at the European Read more
There is a new Carnival of Space ready to dazzle you with wonderful space and astronomy blogs from the furthest reaches of the World Wide Web. This week the Carnival is hosted by David Portree at his ever-fascinating Beyond Apollo site. Go on over there and explore. you won’t regret Read more
Galaxies, distant from us in space and time, have been in the news recently. Astronomers knew that far away galaxies (and hence ancient galaxies)were smaller than those galaxies closer (in time and space) to us today in the Milky Way. It was believed that the first galaxies appeared less than Read more
It is 14 November 2019 and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, when humans first walked on another world, has been and gone but today a new and exciting voyage begins. A massive booster stage pushes a spacecraft out of Earth orbit. This vehicle comprises two Orion Read more
Between Mars and Jupiter lies the Asteroid Belt, a swarm of millions of shards of rock, metal and ice. Somewhere out here, between 5-10 February 2009, a small asteroid, perhaps 5m across, violently slammed into another, larger (120 m), asteroid at a closing speed of about 18 000 km/h. As much Read more
If you love great articles on space and astronomy you are probably already following the Carnival of Space. If you aren’t familiar with the Carnival, it’s a regular round up of links to the most exciting blog posts about outer space. It’s a great guide to what’s going on beyond Read more
Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by Richard Branson, is celebrating the first glide test of its SpaceShipTwo spaceplane this weekend. Piloted by Pete Siebold and Mike Alsbury, the VSS Enterprise was released from its WhiteKnightTwo mothership at an altitude of 13.7km (45 000 ft) for a unpowered Read more
Judging by all the enquiries I have received recently, many of you are seeing a bright star in the south-eastern sky. This is not a star, especially not the star of Bethlehem, rather it is the mighty planet Jupiter. As Jupiter is in so perfect a position in the sky Read more
David Grennan, an amateur from Dublin, has thrilled astronomers with his discoveries of supernovae in distant galaxies. Here is the inside story of his admirable achievements. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where talented amateurs can make important contributions. As example you have only to look at the recent Read more
Gorgeous! Spectacular! Awesome! What else can I say about this stunning Turneresque image of the Lagoon Nebula (M8)? A typical stellar nursery, M8 lies about 4300 light years (1320 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. About a hundred light years (31 parsecs) wide, it is actually several times as Read more
Ask anyone to draw a picture of a planet and I’ll bet they draw a ringed planet like Saturn. This giant world has always stood out from the other worlds of the Solar System thanks to its amazing rings, in astronomy books it was ‘The Ringed Planet’. Thirty years Read more
NASA’s next manned spacecraft will be the Orion, a capsule which will be carried into space by a rocket. Weighing 25 tonnes, each Orion will carry up to six people. Accommodation on board is cosy at best, cramped at worst. Orion was intended to take astronauts to the Moon and Read more
What is light? Here’s an easy introduction to the electromagnetic spectrum all the way from radio waves to gamma rays. Before the modern era of technological astronomy, to know anything about the Universe beyond our planet we relied on light. We had to see planets, stars, and so on, to Read more
In, say 1975, there was only one kind of ‘stuff’ in the Universe, matter made of protons and neutrons. By 1985 there was a consensus that this was not enough, the gravity of the stars in galaxies was not sufficient to hold them together. Something else was there, vast, mysterious Read more
We all love bright and showy spiral galaxies! So much so, that we tend to overlook the elliptical galaxies which make up about 30% of the galaxies out there. Smaller than spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies may be full of stellar living fossils, surviving virtually unchanged from an older cosmic era. Read more
It is difficult to look at this Hubble Space Telescope image of the nebula NGC 2467 without thinking about what it would be like to fly through it. It is easy to imagine floating through a beautiful softly glowing mist, something like the Mutara Nebula, scene of Kirk and Spock’s Read more
This fluffy pink blob is the star-forming region LHA-120-N 11 in the Large Magellanic Cloud some 170 000 light years from the Sun. N 11 (occasionally called the Bean Nebula) is about 1000 light years across. Take a moment to think just big that is! What is the source of Read more
Imagine that once the Sun sets, rather than a dark sky sprinkled with a few thousand dim stars, we had a sky blazing with ten thousand or so stars blazing brighter than Venus. How different would astronomy, mythology, everyday life be? Planets orbiting stars in the NGC 3603 Young Cluster Read more
I’d like to tell you that I’m on the surface of an asteroid called Itokawa. I travelled there on a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency mission called Hayabusa and was left behind. Yes, I’m there, millions of miles away, among the rocks on Itokawa, right now as I’m typing this.You must Read more
The team at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency deserve congratulations for the amazing (and hopefully record-breaking) Hayabusa mission to asteroid 25143 Itokawa. Launched in 2003 (the spacecraft was called MUSES-C at launch, but was renamed in flight), this mission has battled against an extraordinary run of bad luck and technical Read more