For those of you following my adventures around the globe via Twitter, Flickr and the like, you may be aware that I recently suffered quite a blow. During my third night observing at the JCMT I began to experience respiratory distress due to the altitude of 13,500 feet. After ascending a…

Tonight I am at the JCMT on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and wil be trying to liveblog the night as we go. This may prove utterly boring, but may be useful. Only time will tell:

1820: Just got back from a tour of the W.M. Keck Telescopes, which one of the operators…

A lot of people have been asking me where I am right now. ‘Where is the telescope’? ‘Can I Google it’?. Well it’s the JCMT telescope and although you might not be able to just type ‘JCMT’ into Google Maps and get it right away you can indeed find them…

For purely selfish reasons I have added two new feeds to my Over… series of Twitter feeds, which update users to upcoming ISS and Hubble transits in their area.

Over Honolulu and Over Mauna Kea should begin updating in the next couple of days. Honolulu is obviously Hawaii principal city. Mauna Kea is…

It was a little while ago now that Comet Holmes first came into our sights in Perseus. It flared from magnitude 17 to 2.8 in only two days and has since been picked up by many amateur and professionals alike, including a very recent Hubble press release.

So here is a…

Soon I will be off on an observing run in Hawaii. I will be using the 15m JCMT telescope on Mauna Kea to take spectral line data using an instrument called HARP.

Since this will be my first professional expedition I will be taking lots of pictures and notes as I…

Kaguya, a Japanese spacecraft touted to be the largest aimed at the moon since NASA’s Apollo era rocketed into space in Sept 2007 on an ambitious mission to study the origins of Earth’s nearest neighbor. This high definition video gives you a great view of the moon’s terrain.read more | digg…

Astronomers have announced the discovery of a fifth planet circling 55 Cancri, a star beyond our solar system. The star now holds the record for number of confirmed extrasolar planets orbiting in a planetary system.read more | digg story

A mother dies after giving birth because her religion prevents her from having a blood transfusion. This is tragic.read more | digg story

Stuart (Astronomy Blog) has been busy working on the telescope XML that has been discussed before. Well he has actually posted some working feeds in what he called STML (see post title).

In response I’ve tried to create Google Sky equivalent KML files. These just read in the STML feeds and put…

The number of space agencies in the world has been steadily rising since the 1990s and reached 36 in 2005. Bilateral and multilateral agreements between agencies are also growing. The advent of the ISS has it made it possible for many countries to take part in long-term, structured programmes of…

A British-led team of scientists have discovered three planets which are hotter and heavier than Jupiter.The planets, named Wasp-3b, Wasp-4b and Wasp-5b, were found by a team led by astronomers from St Andrews University in Fife, as part of the SuperWASP project.read more | digg story

I have been researching my family history for quite some years now. Something that has always fascinated me is how very many people it has taken for each of us to end up here. Some people find it impressive that I am related to King Henry I and to William…