Comet Tempel 1 is by far the most closely studied comet in history. We saw it up close for the first time in July 2005, when NASA’s Deep Impact mission flew past it, pelting in with a projectile on the Read more
The Zodiacal light is a rarely seen yet intriguing spectacle in a dark sky. Sinead McNicholl reveals the connection between the zodial light and a famous rockstar! Have you ever noticed a whitish glow in the night sky which appears 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 Read more
In 2003 astronomers discovered Eris, an object seemingly bigger than Pluto, in the frigid Trans-Neptunian wastes of the Solar System. Rather than becoming the Tenth Planet, Eris led directly to Pluto’s demotion from planetary status! But is this saga over? Read more
The long dark nights continue through February, but this does give us a chance to see some interesting objects in our night sky. This month features several planets. Sinead McNicholl has the details. The planet Jupiter is still visible and Read more
Kepler-11 is an amazing, newly-discovered system of exoplanets. About 2000 light years from Earth, six planets orbit a star like our Sun. Each planet is bigger and more massive than the Earth. This whole planetary system is squeezed into a Read more
Forty years ago, NASA’s Apollo 14 mission landed the fifth and sixth men on the Moon. Apollo 14 was a triumph for one man in particular. Alan Shepard fought debilitating illness for the chance to walk on another world. Read more
An older generation will never forget where they were when they heard the news of President Kennedy’s murder Alas, I have three such memories. The 2001 terror attacks in the US, the destruction of Columbia and its crew in 2003 Read more
Today is the anniversary of the deaths of the crew of the shuttle Challenger in 1986. The tragedy was of course recognised world-wide and letters of sympathy flooded in to NASA and the White House. Historian Dwayne Day located a Read more
The giant star Betelgeuse will soon perish in a titanic explosion. Could this happen in the mythical “doomsday” year of 2012? Could dying Betelgeuse take us with it? “Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!” was the chant which summoned the obnoxious ghost played Read more
Don Pollacco, a research astronomer at Queens University Belfast, came to Armagh Planetarium to give a fascinating talk on exoplanets in January 2011. Afterwards Dr Pollaco kindly chatted to me about his experiences. CJ: Thanks for a really interesting talk. Read more
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is to use a unique system called a “sky crane” to touch down next year on the Red Planet. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have just released a video of this previously untried mechanism under 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 Read more
Armagh Planetarium kicked off 2011 in style with some amazing astronomy-based events in association with the BBC. Sinead McNicholl has a personal report of our part in the exciting Stargazing Live project. BBC Stargazing Live was a three day live Read more
2011 will be a year of exciting and historic upcoming events in space exploration. It is is also a significant anniversary year of some triumphs and tragedies in space history. Here’s a look at what lies in store. This year Read more
NASA’s amazing Kepler planet-searching spacecraft has made a significant new discovery. Planet Kepler-10b is an inhospitable world but it is one of the smallest confirmed exoplanets yet found and may be the most Earth-like world discovered so far. The Read more
Orion the Hunter is the easiest to recognise constellation in the skies of the Northern Hemisphere. Big, and full of bright stars and interesting objects, Orion is a favourite amongst stargazers. Best of all, Orion is one of the tiny 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 Read more
In this first week of 2011, BBC Two is presenting three nights of extraordinary astronomical events and the team at Armagh Planetarium is joining in the fun with our own exciting contributions. Here is what is in store for the Read more
Christmas 1968 saw three men from Earth make a remarkable and unprecedented voyage of exploration. A dramatic and hurriedly planned mission gave the crew the first human view of the Moon’s farside and the whole human race saw our homeplanet Read more
This year we could have witnessed a Christmas-time shuttle flight as November’s STS-133 mission had been re-scheduled to 17 December, but once again Discovery’s final flight has been postponed, this time to February. Sinead McNicholl has the details. Originally Discovery Read more
While you are opening your presents under the Christmas tree, singing some Christmas carols or sitting down to tuck into your turkey dinner on 25 December, spare a thought for a few people above you! Yes, indeed, there will be Read more
The long and dark nights of December feature some spectacular and easy to spot treats for the stargazer. In our regular guide to the night sky, Martina Redpath tells us all about the celestial wonders of December 2010’s night sky. Read more
It’s that crazy time of year again, with dark nights, frosty roads, and late night shopping, to accommodate our frantic Christmas shopping sprees. So for anyone stumped for what to get that amateur astronomer or sci-fi fan friend or loved Read more
To get the latest on space and astronomy go to Carnival of Space. Every week, the host website introduces the latest and most exciting articles written about stars, planets and space exploration. This week’s Carnival is presented by the cute Read more
The smallest stars in the galaxy are the red dwarfs. Recent research suggests they are more common than previously suspected. Tiny, cool and dim compared to the Sun, they may seem unimportant. But consider this: red dwarfs not only outnumber Read more
Carnival of Space, the regular and vital guide to space and astronomy blogs is hosted by a different site every week. If you’re interested in everything beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, you can’t afford to miss it! This week the Carnival Read more
The extra-solar planet HAT-P-1b has baffled astronomers since it was discovered in 2006. The planet is puffed up much larger than theory predicts. HAT-P-1 has a volume nearly twice than of Jupiter’s yet it contains only half Jupiter’s mass. Read more
Cepheid variables are massive, pulsating stars, valued by astronomers for the precise link between their brightness and steady pulsation. Let’s look at the history of Cepheid variables and how recent discoveries about these stars shatter established theories of stellar evolution. Read more
Carnival of Space is a great resource for finding what’s hot in space and astronomy. Each week, a different blogger plays host to the carnival, introducing the latest articles written about stars, planets and space exploration. This week’s Carnival is Read more
Could HIP 13044 b be the strangest exoplanet yet found? We are getting used to the discoveries of bizarre exoplanets but newly-discovered world HIP 13044 b not only survived the cataclysm of its star swelling into a red giant, but Read more
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been looking ten thousand years into the future of the vast globular cluster Omega Centauri. Nearly 16 000 light years from Earth, Omega Centauri is a vast globular cluster of several million stars. Read more
Already Hollywood is planning next year’s marketing offensive on our wallets. One planned blockbuster for summer 2011 is Battle:LA in which extraterrestrial invaders spread alarm and dismay in southern California. But is the motivation of the movie’s aliens astronomically dubious? Read more
Spacebrains is our new and incredibly addictive astronomy quiz app for iPads/Pods/Phones. What is more, it’s completely free from the iTunes Store! It’s strange how you wait years for an exciting free astronomy app for your iPod/Pad/Phone from Armagh Planetarium Read more
The darker evenings of November offer some thrilling sights to stargazers including the Leonid meteor shower. Martina Redpath has the details on what you can see in the November skies. As we get closer to the end of the year Read more
NASA’s Deep Impact probe flew past comet Hartley 2 and revealed a odd-looking peanut-shaped nucleus. What are the first impressions from these exciting images? Only about a mile (1.6 km) from end to end, the nucleus of Comet Hartley2 is Read more
Armagh Planetarium has launched ‘Pocket Sky’, a new app for iPhone, iPad and iPodTouch available for free from the iTunes store. This app is a result of collaboration between Dr. Tom Mason, Director of Armagh Planetarium and Mr John Kennedy Read more
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) 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 Read more
Who am I? I’m Colin Johnston, Armagh Planetarium’s Science Education Director. How did I get here? “According to their biographies, Destiny’s favoured children usually had their lives planned out from scratch. Napoleon was figuring out how to rule France when Read more
Armagh Planetarium is the oldest functioning planetarium in the UK. Sited in the historic city of Armagh, our mission is “To advance and promote the knowledge and understanding of astronomy and related sciences” and we’ve been doing this since 1968. Read more
In the early 1960s, the sky had no limits for NASA . Planners for the agency foresaw an ever-expanding future of exploration through the Solar System. Some amazing missions were planned. Alas in August 1967, the US Congress refused to Read more
Here’s how rainbows are made. Some 13.7 billion years ago, a mere millionth of a second after the Big Bang, the first hydrogen and helium nuclei condensed out of a hot, dense soup of quarks and gluons. It took another Read more
Searching for life elsewhere in the Universe is a fascinating endeavour. It is is not a recent idea either. Astronomers in the 1800s used telescopes to search for signs of life and even civilization elsewhere in the Solar System. Some Read more
“Rods from God” is the nick-name given to a hypothetical orbital weapon for bombarding targets on the Earth from space. Just how feasible is this concept? There are undeniable links between the spaceflight and military communities but apart from 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)
That amazing instrument, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), has just celebrated its twentieth anniversary since it was placed in orbit. Since then, (after a rocky start, remember that dodgy mirror?) it has revolutionised not only what we know about cosmology, Read more
The late ’50s and ’60s were a different time from the anxious era that is today. Nuclear power and space travel were both cool and wonderful new technologies. The only thing that could be cooler and more wonderful would Read more
On 10 March 2010, I gave a talk covering the big picture to the IAA. I dealt with huge expanses of time from the distant past to the far future. One item I skipped over was the first scientifically informed Read more
Dark matter and its part in the evolution of the Universe is revealed by new data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope. This image could be taken for a lurid TV special effect (the Lights of Zetar perhaps?) but it Read more
In March 2010 that superb but underappreciated probe Mars Express made a series of very close passes by the Martian moon Phobos. On one occasion it came as close as 107 km to the tiny world’s surface. The purpose Read more
Sub-orbital space tourism took a step forward on Monday 22 March 2010 when Virgin Galactic’s first spaceplane, VSS Enterprise, took to the air for the first time. The amazing craft was carried by its equally extraordinary twin-fuselage WhiteKnightTwo mothership throughout Read more
Fifty years of SETI with radio telescopes has so far proved negative. We have found no messages of peace and goodwill, no galactic internet, no extraterrestrial propaganda or advertising. No starships full of aliens have arrived on Earth to Read more
We all know how the Sun, our Earth and the rest of the Solar System condensed out of a vast protoplanetary disc some 4.5 billion years ago. There were some early mishaps such as the collisions which birthed the Moon, Read more
Venus was once thought to be a lush, life-bearing planet, but modern research has revealed an utterly lethal world. What perils await explorers of “Earth’s evil twin”? Is there anyone who hasn’t admired the lovely beacon of Venus hanging Read more
At first glance Gliese 710 is not a very distinguished star. A K7 class orange dwarf a bit more than half as massive as the Sun, it currently lies about 63 light years from us in the constellation Serpens. It Read more
Around this time of year, go outside after 9pm on a clear night and look at the sky. Even if it is not quite dark a bright star will be visible in the south. This is Vega, the third brightest Read more
The Blue Streak rocket was an advanced British missile of the 1950s which nearly became a space rocket before ending up a casualty of government apathy. Let’s look at Blue Streak’s rise and fall. These days most British Read more
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 Read more
The Truth is out there? Conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific ideas abound. If there is life on other planets or the Universe popped into existence only a few thousand years ago we need to know! What if everything you thought you Read more
About 490 light years from our planet in the constellation of Monoceros lies a G type star designated COROT-7. A little smaller and dimmer than our Sun, this star is circled by at least two planets, one of which, COROT-7b, Read more
If you read the forums and the comments sections of blogs about spaceflight you will see many posts bemoaning how the conquest of space hasn’t quite gone according to plan. By now, rocket-launched capsules ought to have been rapidly superseded Read more
Some 150 light years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus lies the star HD 209458 and its planetary system. The star is almost a clone of our own Sun, but one its planets is completely unlike anything in our 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 Read more
Saturn: the Blue Planet? The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals the secrets of the giant planet. This false colour image from the Hubble Space Telescope not only shows Saturn in an unfamiliar light, but displays some of the giant planet’s Read more