When the first module of the International Space Station (ISS) launched from Kazakhstan in 1998, humans just had a small orbiting home, about the size of a bus. Over the past two decades it has expanded beyond recognition, and is now an orbiting science laboratory that is literally out of Read more…
Continuing our weekly Astronomy & You series we have an article explaining the invention of Wi-Fi from Tony Beasley. Tony is an IAU member and is President of Commission B4 Radio Astronomy within the organisation. Tony is also the Director of The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the USA. The history Read more…
Continuing our weekly series on the application of astronomy to technology, we have an piece written by Dmitrij Bisikalo; Professor at The Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Astronomy and the President of the International Astronomical Union’s Commission B1 on Computational Astrophysics. In this piece, he outlines the link between Read more…
Satellites, our lives wouldn’t be complete without them. Since the beginning of the Space Race, Satellites have become a major part of how we observe our Solar System and the Universe, and also keep a close eye on our own planet.
Article written by: Heather Alexander, Education officer At the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium we have been having a look at all the things that are going to happen throughout the year and trying to select some of the events that we are most looking forward to. Needless to say this Read more…
Have you ever wondered what is it like to live in space? How you put things down when there’s no ‘up’ or ‘down’? How do you sleep when nothing holds you to your bed? How you wash your face when the water does not behave normally? Here are some interesting facts about life in space.
The Observatory and Planetarium has welcomed school students to visit for work experience. A previous Astronote described our work with the Faulkes Telescope Project. Below is an account written by three of our work experience students in 2018 March, based on the work done at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium by them and three other students.
Recent observations of the helium star HD144941 have been obtained from space. Armagh astronomers Professor Simon Jeffery and Dr Gavin Ramsay have discovered that they show a light curve best explained by darker and lighter patches on the star’s surface coming into view as the star rotates with a period Read more…
The 2018 Robinson Lecture will be given by Professor Louise Harra of University College London. Her topic is about the Solar Orbiter, a new spacecraft to be launched to study the Sun. It will be held in the Archbishop’s Palace in Armagh on Wednesday 22 November, 2017, starting at 7pm. Read more…
On Aug 14th 2017 LIGO and the Virgo Gravitational Wave detectors based in the USA and Italy detected the fourth merging Black Hole event. This was a triumph for both groups, but especially the Virgo group which had only started taking regular data earlier that month. It did leave many Read more…