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…