A team of astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile to shed new light on planets around a nearby star, L 98-59, that resemble those in the inner Solar System. Amongst the findings are a planet with half the mass of Venus — Read more…
Hello Stargazers and welcome to April! Well, as the saying goes “April showers bring May flowers”, so we may be low on clear nights for stargazing. Due to our climate and location cloud cover often interferes with our ability to see what the night sky has to offer, but we Read more…
While 2020 was in many ways a strange and challenging year for many of us in one way or another, the heavens certainly gave us cause to look up and find some measure of celestial relief. Well there is good news! 2021 will be no different as we can prepare Read more…
The late September and early October nights bring with them a few things; crunchy leaves for evening walks, pumpkin spice lattes for the masses and the best time of year to get planet spotting. There are five – yes, five – planets that are observable with relative ease this time Read more…
The answer is possibly, after an international team of astronomers announced the discovery of a rare molecule, phosphine, in the clouds of Venus. Phosphine, which is a molecule made up of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms, is a gas only made industrially on Earth or by microbes that thrive Read more…
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…
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