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…
At Armagh Planetarium we hosted our very first video game based workshop. This summer we immersed ourselves into the blocky world of Minecraft. Using MinecraftEdu, the children that took part in these workshops got to explore possibly one of the coolest places ever, the International Space Station! As Read more…
See you later February, you’ve been a wonderful month, but now it is time to welcome March. Something we delight in here at Armagh Planetarium is how the months got their names. March is a particularly nerdy one. March got its name after the Roman god of war, Mars. Not Read more…
When I heard about this book I immediately wanted to read it, being a space enthusiast and very interested in the journey to Mars, I had to know how one man stranded on the Red Planet could try to survive. Mark Watney an astronaut on the Ares 3 mission Read more…
Have you ever stopped and really thought about the possibility of finding life in the universe or maybe that extra-terrestrial life finding us! And then, when they find us, what if they aren’t exactly friendly and they want our planet for some super evil plan so they decide to have Read more…
It is already one of the biggest films to hit cinemas this year, and if you haven’t seen Avengers: Age of Ultron yet, then I urge you to go and see it. Not only is it a brilliant action film, there is also a fantastic piece of space science involved Read more…
When was the last time you ever stopped to have a good think about the giant natural satellite that orbits our planet? The Moon is something that has fascinated us for centuries, but by and large, we have now come to accept it as something that is commonplace within our Read more…
In July 2015, we will finally have our long-awaited closeup views of the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons when NASA’s New Horizons probe flies past the tiny and distant worlds. Assuming all goes well, suddenly we will have revealed to us about 25 million square kilometres of alien landscapes Read more…
Dyson spheres are an outrageous concept. The idea of looking for alien megastructures in space appeared at the end of the 1950s and was widely discussed in speculations about searching for extraterrestrial civilisations. It also inspired some great science fiction novels. Today the idea seemed to have faded into obscurity, Read more…
June 2014 saw excited reports that NASA was working on a faster than light warp drive starship. Astonishingly, weeks later we are being told that NASA has also successfully tested a device which could push along a space vehicle without consuming any propellant. If true, this would be an astonishing Read more…
In August the Summer Triangle continues to dominate the seasonal sky. This classic asterism is defined by three bright stars of the constellations Cygnus, Aquila and Lyra, these are the distant but dazzling Deneb (Alpha Cygni), Altair (Alpha Aquila) and Vega (Alpha Lyrae). Running through the Triangle is the pale Read more…
You may have heard of the name Galileo. Perhaps it is through an interest in science or maybe it’s from the Queen song “Bohemian Rhapsody”. But who was the man behind the famous name? What did he do and achieve? Well, as Galileo would be 450 years old in 2014, 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…
Could humanity ever travel to the stars? Today this is an unattainable dream but world-wide researchers are studying the possibilities of starships. One concept for an interstellar craft is the photon rocket, an idea once popular but less prominent today. What happened to this appealing idea for voyaging into deepest Read more…
I am sure it is every Star Wars fan’s dream for the Star Wars Galaxy to be a reality! Imagine the possibilities; thousands of species that could share information; millions of fantastical worlds that you could visit in a matter of hours or days; ability to use “the force” to Read more…
Tachyons, hypothetical sub-atomic particles which travel faster than light, once attracted a lot of publicity yet we do not hear much discussion of them today. Whatever happened to tachyons? Over a century ago, Albert Einstein anticipated odd things happening on a spaceship travelling at speeds close to that of Read more…
Zeta Reticuli, a dim binary system of Sun-like stars only 39.5 light years away in the little constellation of Reticulum is strangely well-known. Why is it so famous? This system was once identified as the home of the little grey-faced and black-eyed humanoids who allegedly abducted Barney and Betty Hill Read more…
Armagh Planetarium hosted an amazing week-long live theatre performance of the Dragons of Azrael in conjunction with the Department of Culture, Arts and leisure’s Creativity Month. Creativity month is an annual event which runs throughout March. Its main aim is to stimulate new thinking and new collaborations to help creative Read more…
Audiences flocked to see James Cameron’s epic movie Avatar, the story of a disabled human who gets a chance to live a new life as a 3m tall blue-skinned humanoid alien from a world called Pandora. In the movie Pandora is a lush jungle-covered moon of a gas giant planet Read more…
Ever had a frustrating morning and wished you could ‘Hulk-out’ or that some superhuman abilities were within your grasp even for the briefest of moments?With the psyche of superheroes very much to the fore in contemporary culture, it is perhaps interesting to learn that emissions similar to those of human Read more…
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is vaster than we puny humans can imagine.A huge (100 000 light years across) spiral of stars and nebulae embedded in the tenuous interstellar medium , the Milky Way is a about a thousand light years thick apart from where it swells into the great Read more…
Mankind is responsible for numerous achievements in technology, arts and science.However, how much can this attributed solely to the human mind or is there another reason man has achieved such incredible feats throughout history.To look at ancient structures built thousands of years ago, how could such primitive man have built Read more…
The belief that mankind is unique in our universe has not been proven otherwise. So what if one day we discover we as humans are not one of a kind, and not only is there maybe other life out there, but it is a world with life identical to our Read more…
Apollo 18, a movie hybrid of horror and science fiction is stirring up a lot of interest. Your intrepid reporter decided to see what the fuss was about. Here is a brief review and my thoughts on the movie’s accuracy. Well, I splashed out the price of a movie Read more…
Has lurid fiction like the movie Iron Sky any basis in fact? Everyone knows that WW2 Germany developed rockets far in advance of the Allies, but some argue that in 1945 the Third Reich was on the verge of developing a space program! Ever since Adolf Hitler’s ‘Thousand Year’ Read more…
Unlike previous voyages of exploration, humanity’s first steps on the Moon did not inspire great works of art and literature. In fact Project Apollo has rarely even intruded in to popular culture. However in the past forty years there has been a smattering of movies and TV shows featuring Project Read more…
Scientists had seriously considered the possibility of plant or even animal life on the surface of Mars for more than a century. However negative results from NASA’s Viking spacecraft in the 1970s ruled out large-scale Martian life but this was not the end of the search for life on Mars. Read more…
“Is there life on Mars?” This must be one of the most-asked questions in astronomy. In this article I am going to look at the historical background to this question. Current thoughts on the possibilities of Martian life will be considered in a follow up article. Why is life Read more…
To observers on Earth, the great bull of Taurus has a fiery red eye. This is Aldebaran, an old red giant star which dwarfs our Sun. Let’s have a closer look at the facts and fiction about this aging star. If you go out after dark on a winter’s Read more…
Apollo 18 is a SF/Horror movie presented as newly-found film footage taken by the fictional crew of a lost 1970s lunar landing mission. The Apollo 18 film uses real NASA movie footage from the Moon (some of it doctored with CGI) and new studio-shot footage with actors and special effects 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? An expensive production starring Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez (whose 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) is praised as one of the twentieth century’s most influential 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. Orion was intended to take astronauts to the Moon and 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 a few tests of anti-satellite weapons, the odd armed space 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 look at the far future of our planet. That was 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 befriend us or to eat us, while our galaxy seems 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 bright in a cerulean sky? (So bright in fact, it 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 by reusable spaceplanes, spacestations should be huge wheel-shaped things, people Read more…