To the stargazers out there, let’s take a journey nearly 7,000 light-years away from earth through our cosmic wonderland otherwise known as space, where towering pillars of gas and dust form the birth of stars. In the northern celestial hemisphere of the night sky, in the constellation Serpens (The Read more…
Matthew McMahon – Museum Collections Officer Patrick (Pat) Corvan was born 18 March 1940 and passed away on 28 December 2024. He was a longstanding friend of the institution and former staff member, and a generous mentor to a younger generation of scientists and historians. His association with astronomy, and Read more…
Rev. W.F.A. Ellison Rev. William Frederick Archdall Ellison was the sixth Director of the Armagh Observatory and was appointed to the role on 15 October 1918. He would remain in this position until his death on 31 December 1936. During that time, he made several telescopes and mirrors, both for Read more…
Regular readers of these notes may have heard of the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) project which aims to detect the optical counterpart of Gravitational Wave events. These events are due to the collision of neutron stars, or a neutron star colliding with a black hole. The scientists involved in Read more…
Armagh is a partner in two telescope projects whose key goal is to detect the optical counterpart of colliding massive dead stars. Albert Einstein predicted that when two massive objects spiral around each other, eventually merging to become one more massive object, gravitational waves would be emitted. Scientists spent a Read more…
The International Astronomical Union’s Commission for World Heritage has undertaken a study tour of the three historic Irish astronomical observatories at Armagh, Birr in Co Offlay and Dunsink in Dublin in order to consider their potential for nomination for UNESCO World Heritage status. The concept of World Heritage is important Read more…
If you’ve ever had any burning questions you wanted to ask an astronomer, here is the place to do it! We’ve answered some common questions here, but if you have any more you’d like an answer to, comment on this post.
One of our Astronomers, Dr Gavin Ramsay, reflects on his memories of some of the amazing telescopes he has travelled to throughout his career! When the telescope was invented in early 17th century, they were generally used in the urban environment. Gradually they were housed in quite grand purpose-built buildings Read more…
Get starry-eyed at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium Book Tickets Here A Valentine’s Day trip to Armagh Observatory and Planetarium will show the special person in your life that you love them to the stars and back. As the trend for experiential gifts continues to rise, especially among social media users Read more…
This is the first Night Sky blog article of the new decade and hopefully I’ll be able to point out some interesting things for you all to see in the night sky this month.
This article has been inspired by the many questions we get asked here at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium. We love being asked questions but we thought it would be funny to have a look at the questions you really should never ask an Astronomer. We hope this gives you a bit of a laugh!
