Article by Ed Snowdon Whether you are a researcher gathering data, or a hobbyist taking photos from your back garden, astronomy has always required a certain amount of good luck. Instruments can be uncooperative, data can be lost or damaged, and of course there’s the ever-present threat of bad weather. Read more…
Ask any number of astronomers who they believe to be the most influential figures in 20th century astronomy and chances are you will hear the name of Vera Rubin being uttered a few times. Recipient of numerous awards and accolades including the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal, Vera Rubin (nee Read more…
It wasn’t long after the invention of radio technology towards the end of the 19th century that scientists considered using the new medium to contact beings on other planets in the Solar System with Mars being the first target. However, with the early probes to Mars and Venus showing no Read more…
The NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope has tracked the fading light of a supernova in the spiral galaxy NGC 2525, located 70 million light years away. Supernovae like this one can be used as cosmic tape measures, allowing astronomers to calculate the distance to their galaxies. Hubble captured these images as Read more…
Galaxy is distorted, appearing as a ring of light in the sky. Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, have revealed an extremely distant and therefore very young galaxy that looks surprisingly like our Milky Way. The galaxy is Read more…
There’s lots to look forward to in the Month of May: the evenings are brighter, there’s the promise of good weather and most importantly – not one, but two bank holiday weekends! There’s also lots to look forward to and look out for in May’s night sky. There’s the chance Read more…
While you may be familiar with black holes from sci-fi and many artists’ renditions of the phenomenon, our first actual view of the event horizon of the supermassive black hole which is at the centre of a neighbouring galaxy, Messier 87, was released 4 weeks ago to the day. What Read more…
Have you ever been worried about the impact of an asteroid wiping out human life? Well, I have some disturbing news for you: there is another possibility involving the explosion of a massive star that gives rise to a gamma-ray burst (called by astronomers simply a GRB), when the star ends its life producing a black hole.
After a special vote in the IAu General Assembly, we interview Armagh Observatory and Planetarium Director. Professor MIchael Burton, on the renaming of the Hubble Law.
Star Wars, the very name brings up images of childhoods spent in front of a TV or cinema screen, absorbing up stories of a galaxy far, far away. For many, it was the thing to ignite their passion for storytelling, and for others it was the thing that ignited their Read more…
On October 31, 2017, the world will celebrate the international hunt for dark matter. Armagh Observatory and Planetarium will be having a special showing of the “Phantom of the Universe” at 2pm, a Full Dome show which discusses our understanding (or lack thereof) Dark Matter, and the search to find 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…
A team of scientists in Australia are scanning the Universe for signals from extraterrestrial life. Professor Matthew Bailes, based at Swinburne University in Melbourne, is the lead scientist in this project funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. Milner has donated $100 million and has the support of Professor Stephen Hawking. Read more…
Dim and isolated, the dwarf irregular galaxy Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte (WLM) could be described as an astronomical “living fossil” as it seems to have developed without ever interacting with any other galaxy since it formed billions of years ago. First observed in 1909, the WLM galaxy is part of the Read more…
Once again, astronomers around the world are investigating a stellar explosion, a supernova, in M82, a galaxy 12 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Although supernovae are awesomely destructive, this event is far, far too distant to cause any danger at all to our planet. Discovered Read more…
Located 12 million light years away in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, Messier 82 is sometimes called the ‘Cigar Galaxy’ from its shape. M82 it is too faint to be seen with the naked eye but can be seen through the telescopes of amateurs. Until recently M82 was Read more…
Our Image of the Month was released to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and is a striking panoramic look at a stellar nursery which is fizzing and crackling with energy as it pops out thousands of new stars. The small southern hemisphere constellation Dorado Read more…
We are looking far from home in this pretty image of an open cluster of young stars, sparkling like jewels. They and their associated gas cloud are known as NGC 346 and are located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy which is more than 210 000 light years Read more…
Studying galaxies and clusters in many wavelengths of light tells astronomers more than a single image ever could. Imaged with the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, NGC 4666 lies some 80 million light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. All looks calm and peaceful, Read more…
Here is possibly the only joke in all of astronomy. Two spiral galaxies walk into a pub. The first one goes up to the bar and asks for two drinks, one for him and one for his friend. The barman looks suspiciously at the second spiral galaxy and says “I’m Read more…
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is the world’s biggest and most complex astronomical instrument. Located at the European Southern Observatory on the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile, the array of antennae is now operational even though it is still incomplete. Here is its first image to be released to Read more…
The astronomy community is excited by the discovery of an exploding star, a supernova, in a galaxy 21 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. We explain this event’s significance and how you can see it too. Discovered on 24 August at the Mount Palomar observatory in California, Read more…
The nearby galaxy NGC 6744, similar to the Milky Way, has been imaged by the European Southern Observatory. What can we see in this beautiful galactic portrait? Barred spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is located in a constellation of the southern hemisphere’s sky, called Pavo (Latin for peacock). At a distance Read more…
An image from the European Southern Observatory, reveals two galaxies, NGC 3169 and NGC 3166, meeting in intergalactic space. What kind of cosmic drama ensues in these close encounters of galaxies? Once the Universe was a quiet and peaceful place. Galaxies serenely sailed through the void in splendid isolation. Today Read more…
NGC 2841 is a rather beautiful flocculent spiral galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope recently imaged NGC 2841 as part of an investigation into how new stars are created. How do stars form? It is a question which intrigues astronomers and it is a very important one too with implications for Read more…
Our Image of the Month is a radically different view of the great spiral galaxy in Andromeda from the European Space Agency. Tracy McConnell explains how it was made and describes the stellar cataclysms it reveals. The inspiration here came from a new ESA image of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, Read more…
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope continues to produce stunning images. Let’s examine a particularly pretty recent treat, revealing the aftermath of a cosmic disaster. Like so many beautiful astronomical sights, the delicate sphere in this delightful image is the remains of a cataclysmic event. About four centuries ago, a tiny 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
About 100 000 light years across, Messier 66 is the largest galaxy in the “Leo Triplet”, three interacting spiral galaxies about 33 million light years from us. This new Hubble Space Telescope image shows that M66 seems to have been through the mangle. Misshapen with an off-centre core, the galaxy is not a neat spiral. It has been tugged by the gravitational pulls of its neighbours’, NGC 3628 and M65, and indeed may have suffered a close encounter with NGC 3628 a billion years or so ago which ripped away hundreds of thousands of stars.
Located just under the line between Regulus and Denebola, M66 and M65 can be seen with a small telescope or 10×50 binoculars in the spring. Why not go out to see if you can find these distant islands of stars?
(What is a Messier object? You can find out in this issue of Astronotes)
Astronomers in search of really, really big stars look to the Tarantula Nebula. Also known as 30 Doradus (or even NGC 2070), this is a very active star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (about 170 000 light years from us). Just how big are the stars in the Tarantula? Read more…
‘ Elliptical galaxy ESO 306-17 looks rather pretty in this Hubble Space Telescope image (count how many other galaxies there are in the background!). However beautiful though it may be, this galaxy could be a ravenous cannibal! ESO 306-17 is isolated in the intergalactic void possibly because it has swallowed Read more…