Today marks the 30th birthday of The Hubble Space Telescope (HST). On the 24th of April 1990 NASA launched Hubble into low earth orbit and it is still up there today! Hubble has allowed us to see deep within the caverns of space, revealing the most incredible and famous images Read more…
This week our Astronomy & You series takes a look at Electronic Imaging Detectors and their effect on our lives. This piece was written by Ana I. Gomez de Castro. Ana is a full professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and member of the Mathematics Faculty in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid Read more…
Article by Armagh Astronomer Tolis Christou Imagine being outdoors on a sunny day, following the Sun as it rises from the east, heading towards the south and then on towards the west where it sets. Now think back: when did you feel the hottest: when the Sun was highest in Read more…
Here we are, on the count down to Christmas, and we’re having a look at all the Astronotes that have been written for our blog this year. We’ve had input not just from the Education Team this year, but also the Academic Staff of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium.
Given that astronomy dates back to early written records from the Babylonians around 1600 BC if not earlier, black holes are a relatively new addition to human knowledge of the cosmos. Black holes cannot be seen therefore it took a long time for the first one to be found. Composed Read more…
Although not quite the ’12 days of Christmas’ gift inventory’, the following checklist should give us a quick peak at some significant events connected with space that we can look forward to witnessing from early 2015, as well as giving us an opportunity to recall other great space dates whose Read more…
When Percival Lowell began the search for “Planet X” little did he know the countless arguments he would cause and effectively how these would lead to a seemingly ever changing solar system. “Planet X” was not the believed birthplace of the X-Men for anyone hoping for the possibility of super Read more…
Looming large in the after dark southern sky in July is the large and overlapping but often overlooked constellations of Ophiuchus and Serpens. Lacking outstandingly bright stars these “two for one” constellations still contain much of interest. Ophiuchus is one of the thirteen constellations that cross the ecliptic, making Read more…
“Man must rise above Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives” Socrates (circa 399BC). Of course the philosopher Socrates would not have been thinking about satellites or spacecraft at this time, but his famous quote Read more…
While HST’s successor is named after the architect of the revolutionary Apollo Moon missions, an obvious tribute to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s second administrator, James E. Webb, the name given is perhaps also symbolic of the aspirations of all those involved in the project, that with the telescope’s Read more…
Although the concept of something being “there” but being hidden from our eyes under the cover of darkness is one that has disturbed usually one or other of us once upon a time, when it comes to space it’s hard to find an idea that thrills scientists and astronomers more. Read more…
Incredibly as we near the close of yet another year, a year that has already been rich in celestial sights for the sky-watcher, perhaps the climax of all-things-cosmic from the Earthlings’ point of view is about to commence with our Solar System’s brand new comet, ISON… “Release the Kraken!” Read more…
If you had asked me in June 2013 how many moons Neptune had, I would have told you the answer was 13. If you asked me in August 2013 how many moons Neptune had, my answer would be 14! 2013 marks the year when a new moon has been found Read more…
“Mars is red, Earth is Blue, We’ve discovered lots of new worlds, And one of them is blue too!” So I’m not a poet and I definitely know it! Nevertheless, last month thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers were able to determine the colour of one the exoplanets closest Read more…
With the anniversary of the passing of one of the most iconic figures in mankind’s space exploration program, it affords us an excuse to re-examine the short but history-making space mission we all know today as Apollo 11. Landmark events in human exploration and scientific discovery can often capture the Read more…
Our Solar System is old. Our best estimates from radiometric dating of meteorites suggest the Sun and its planets (including Earth) were forming some 4.6 billion years ago. The Universe itself appears to be some 13.8 billion years old based on its observed rate of expansion and the properties of Read more…
With only two planets in our solar system without moons (Mercury and Venus) our curiosity is a little spoilt for choice. Normally when people begin to search about for information on planets with the most interesting moons dominant planets like Jupiter and Saturn tend to win people’s attention while others Read more…
Looking up in to the night sky it’s not difficult to see why the ancient Greeks believed that all the stars in the night sky were fixed on a celestial sphere revolving around the Earth and other planets. From our view on Earth the stars appear to be at a Read more…
Comet ISON may be the greatest comet of this century as it skims through the atmosphere of the Sun this autumn. The Hubble Space Telescope has just the best image yet of this emissary from the outer darkness. When the image was made, the coma, the ‘head’ of the comet, Read more…
Have you ever wished you could hop into a time machine, zip back billions of years and answer one of the age old questions that have plagued mankind from the first time someone peered up into the night sky? To know what exactly happened in the universe that created the Read more…
This year has started off with perhaps a little more promise than the last, not only did the world not end but a new Mayan calendar has started, mysterious planet Nibiru did not crash into the Earth and nor did we get wiped out with any comets/ aliens/ or stellar 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…
![Star types from left to right: a red dwarf, our Sun, a blue dwarf, and R136a1 (hypergiant). Where star sizes are measured by radius, from centre to surface, and where 1 solar radius is equal to that of our Sun (km) - R136a1’s radius is 35.4 times greater than the Sun [approximately 24.8 million km]. Credit: Author: ESO/M. Kornmesser](https://armaghplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/image-of-star-types.jpg)
How big is the largest known star? Compared to planets, stars will always be the overall group winners in terms of superior size. When you look at the night sky on a clear night and away from city lights, you will see that there are stars of varying sizes and 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…
A long, long time ago when the first stars and galaxies were forming, the Universe was filled with electrically neutral hydrogen. This thin soup of gas absorbed ultraviolet light and all of space would have seemed filled with softly glowing fog. The light of the first generation of stars was Read more…
The debris from a vast cosmic explosion, the Crab Nebula in Taurus is a well-known spectacle. But what is it and how was it formed? On 4 July 1054 AD Yang Wei-T’e (?-?), astronomer to the Chinese emperor, carefully recorded a ‘guest star’ in the constellation of Taurus. Yang 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…
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…
NGC 6302 is a beautiful example of a planetary nebula formed when a bloated red giant star transformed into a tiny white dwarf, belching about half its mass into space in the process. This dramatic image looks like some vast cosmic eruption, and that impression is entirely correct. We’re looking Read more…
Gleaned from NASA and Hubblesite.org, here are some facts you may not know about the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). 1. The HST’s history is longer than you might have thought, going back to just after World War II. In 1946, the astronomer Lyman Spitzer (1914-97) identified the main advantages 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…
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…
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. Omega Centauri might be the core of a dwarf galaxy 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…
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 at a closing speed of about 18 000 km/h. As much 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 years (31 parsecs) wide, it is actually several times as 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 to hold them together. Something else was there, vast, mysterious 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…
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, something like the Mutara Nebula, scene of Kirk and Spock’s 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…
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 be? Planets orbiting stars in the NGC 3603 Young Cluster 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, star formation, exoplanets and so on, but also how we 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 may actually represent proof of that elusive and mysterious entity, 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…
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 features. The image was created in early 2009, when Saturn Read more…