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.
Space is forever changing. Here is a list of 10 things we used to believe about Space.
July 4, 2018 saw the 150th birthday of Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868 – 1921), one of the most important astronomers of the 20th century. Born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Leavitt graduated from Radfcliffe College, Harvard, in 1892. She then stayed on at the Harvard College Observatory as a volunteer research assistant. Whilst attempting a graduate degree in astronomy and travelling in Europe, she became ill with grave consequences for her hearing. In 1902, then director, Edward Pickering, invited Henrietta to join the permanent staff at Harvard, where she was assigned to study “variable” stars.
Article by: Holly Preece, PhD student at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium NASA’s Hubble space telescope was launched on 24th April 1990. It was the first optical space telescope to be launched into orbit and has been one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built. It orbits the Earth Read more…
October is an interesting month for astronomers as World Space Week falls from 4 October until 10 October and coincidentally it’s a good month for keen astronomers to take to the skies. This time of the year is perfect for spotting the Milky Way’s sister galaxy, M31 in Andromeda. It Read more…
The year 2014 could see the first 3D printer brought into space, the first fare-paying passengers leave Planet Earth on the Virgin Galactic and the first test mission of a new vehicle called Orion that might one day take humans to Mars. Exciting stuff, bring on 2014! But what else Read more…
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is just one of an enormous number of galaxies spread throughout a vast Universe, which is expanding.Everyone knows these facts now, but how do we actually know about our place in the Universe? Light travels through space as a wave, and hence light has Read more…
In more than twenty years of hard work, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has made both beautiful images and profound discoveries, sometimes doing both at the same time. What are its greatest contributions to science? Hubble has enabled us to estimate just how big and how old the universe is 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. Cepheid variable stars have been known since the 18th Read more…