Happy soon-to-be summer, star gazers! June has a few things going for it; it’s the beginning of summer (officially), we have a lovely new moon, there’s some planet spotting to be done in the early morning; and the combined effects of clear, warm days with lower levels of air pollution Read more…
This week it’s Museum Week 2020 and today has the honour of being #ClimateMW day! Here at AOP we monitor the weather daily, and have been keeping weather records for over 200 years – clearly we are very interested in our weather and the climate. On Astronotes we have quite Read more…
Next in our 5 Facts series we have the most evil planet of them all! The second planet from the sun is named after the Roman Goddess of love. However, as we are about to find out, it is far from lovely! Hot, Hot, Hot! Although Mercury is closest to Read more…
Hello Stargazers! We are well and truly into spring now (and hopefully we have all recovered from losing that 1 precious hour of sleep when the clocks sprung forward, eh?). The high pressure weather system we have had recently means clear, crisp nights for many of us – excellent conditions Read more…
Welcome to spring! In theory at least – someone should really let our climate know that it’s time to brighten up a little bit. Depending on whether or not you adhere to the meteorological or astronomical definitions of “spring”, it officially began either on 1st March or will begin on 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.
Ah, the winter night sky, how we love thee. The shorter daytime means even longer to stargaze; if we are lucky here in Armagh we will get some high pressure days leading to crisp, clear, starry nights. So, in the evenings after your Christmas shopping has finished for the day Read more…
Astrobiology is the study of life on planets or moons other than the Earth. But, to search for life, we must first know what life is. And that might not be as simple a task as you’d think. It turns out that ‘life’ might just be an arbitrary definition that Read more…
Following from last week’s introduction to our climate change series, this week we have an article explaining how climate change actually works and why it happens. Firstly, we will be drawing on our sister planet Venus as an example. Earth’s Evil Twin Earth and Venus are, on the face of Read more…
Satellites, our lives wouldn’t be complete without them. Since the beginning of the Space Race, Satellites have become a major part of how we observe our Solar System and the Universe, and also keep a close eye on our own planet.