The BBC has an interesting article on how as NASA’s money is redirected into other endeavours (say into manned travel to Mars and the like) its existing capabilities (say its extensive Earth observation capabilities). Basically they’re saying that we all benefit from NASA’s ability to observe the Earth and to…

I know this is literally yesterday’s news but here is my take on the story anyway. Researchers using the ESO 3.6m telescope in Chile have analysed the wobble of a star known as Gliese 581 (centre of starfield below). This star is about 20 light years away. Previously, a Neptune-like planet…

So Hubble is now 17 years old and so NASA/ESA have released some incredible pictures take with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) of the Carina Nebula. This nebula contains one of the largest known stars Eta Carinae, which is a highly unpredictable variable with a brightness greater than 4…

These days we’ve all seen pictures of other worlds in stunning detail. We are familiar with pictures of the Moon and of the Earth and well know that the circles we see online and on paper are really globes, floating around in outer space. Now NASA’s STEREO mission to observe the…

The image above shows the Bullet Cluster. Also known as 1E 0657-56, this is a pair of clusters of galaxies some 3.4 billion light years away. As Jon Davies told us in yesterday’s Astrolunch meeting however: you should be careful about believing everything you see. This image is not a regular photograph…

I have a big notebook from the National Astronomy Meeting filled with notes and asterisks and doodles on abstracts for talks that I wanted to come back to. I’ll be blogging many of them in the coming days and weeks in what I have decided to tastefully call my ‘NAM…

NASA researchers using the Spitzer space telescope have laid out what they have called ‘planetary danger zones’ around stars. In these zones, extending from bright O-stars, protoplanetary disks will be swept away by the strong stellar winds given out by the star. Smaller,cooler stars will continue forming planets from accretion…

You may recall I blogged about The Jodcast. There are some podcasts I find I listen to on my iPod and there others I listen to on my Mac. The former is easy but the latter can be annoying - you have to open iTunes and open it there etc…

At NAM I heard a great talk by Gary Fuller on Methanol Masers (a sort of laser created by gas in space). Whilst I find the topic quite interesting its a bit beyond this blog for now. However the telescope used as part of his research is the Parkes 64m telescope…

My NAM 2007 photos are up on Flickr. not very astronomy related, more the social side. Will put up a scientific version soon…

Just a quick one before I finally go to bed. Check out Wikisky (Link). It basically Google Maps but for space. It only covers data from IRAS and the Sloane Digital Sky Survey so far but its a lot of fun to look at the sky so easily in these…

What do you call a podcast from Jodrell Bank? Well duh, its a Jodcast (Link). Running since early 2006, the Jodcast from Manchester’s world-class, historical radio scope is quite good fun. I’ve listened to the latest episode and also the special NAM episodes so far and have to say I…

Day two of the UK’s National Astronomy Meeting was very good. It started with two excellent talks given by two excellent speakers. It ended with drinks and dancing at Preston’s National football Museum (odd venue choice, in my opinion).

The day began with a talk titled ‘50 Years of Nucleosynthesis’ and…

NASA head Mike Griffin has said that they will go and fix Hubble in September 2008. Service Mission Four (SM4) will not leave for Hubble any earlier than August 2008 but could be later than September if it means a better result in the end. Either way the mission could…

I should have guessed that the one story the BBC would show on their site about NAM would be the one on the ‘Star Trek’ shields. How marvellously predictable of both me and them! (Link)

At 7.30pm on Monday night there was a ‘Question Time’ event held in the Greenbank Lecture Theatre of the NAM 2007 venue. The format was four speakers sat in a casual arrangement on stage being asked questions which were submitted previously via email. The audience were invited to give views…

After arriving via the train (changing at Crewe - why is it always Crewe?) I registered at the UK National Astronomy Meeting held in Preston by the Royal Astronomical Society at around 11.30am. This put me an hour early for lunch and two and half hours early for any actual…

Obviously not vietNAM but the UK’s National Astronomy Meeting. This is my first NAM and so far it’s so-so. There have been interesting talks and I have met some interesting people. However so far I would call it fun or jolly.
Basically every year the UK’s astronomy…

Boing Boing, I do so love your random photos. (Link)

Look at the picture above carefully (click on it for a larger version if it helps). Do you see all the small circles? There are over a thousand of them. Well each one used to be a house. A circular mud-like structure with a straw roof. A family used to…