I am often asked how gravity works. I usually answer and then they say ‘yes, but HOW does it work?’. Well here is another stab at answering a fairly complicated question via the internet (never a good idea).

These are the top stories from the Digg Space category for the week ending Saturday 19th of April 2008:

• 1 Fifty Years of American Space Exploration [Slideshow]
• 2 Astronomy Picture of the Day: The Running Chicken Nebula
• 3 America in Space: NASA”s First Fifty Years
• 4 Mars radar opens up a planet’s third dimension
• 5…

I had a question via email asking about Comet Holmes. I thought that by answering it on the blog, maybe others would also have some questions answered. so, thanks to Marycie for her question.

Comet Holmes was a very dim, and expected comet. Until October last year. During the period…

Many animals have been put into space. Here I list my favourite space critters, including the Orbiting Frogs for which this very blog is named.

There is an interesting conversation taking place on Universe Today. You’ll currently find a list of short answers to the question ‘what is the value of space exploration?’ from a series of Astronomy Bloggers.

My favourite quotes so far are “It would be useful to know about the cosmos, rather…

Two new designs in the Orbiting Frog Shop this week that are worth noting. ‘Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining’ depicts a cloud blocking the Sun whilst a series of Ag symbols cling to its edges. ‘Parallel Universes’ shows the word universe twice, in parallel; perfect for anyone who understands…

These are the top stories from the Digg Space category for the week ending Saturday 12th of April 2008:

• 1 Firefox Logo Spied In Deep Space
• 2 The 1.5 Gigayear Technology Gap.
• 3 Space is full of crap
• 4 Brand New NASA Science Website Opens
• 5 APOD: At first, he couldn”t see the Moon

To…

After a brief abuse of my servers by someone or something, I am just about back up and running. Those of you using the 100 Brightest Satellites on Google Earth may have noticed that it’s stopped working. This will be fixed in the next couple of days.

This week sees the UK’s biggest astronomy conference take place in Belfast. The location moves around but the news is always interesting and those attending always have fun. Institutions will be announcing results and nervous students will be giving some of their first major talks. NAM is always good fun…

Listen, I love APOD but I am a bit fed up of everyone on Digg filling up the digg/space category with endless APOD images. They’re very pretty, and we all like them, but how am I supposed to know when a really amazing one comes up if you all digg every…

Well what do you know, as soon as I make myself a wavelength slider for Google Sky, Google go ahead and pass me by by releasing the much anticipated web version of Google Sky complete with wavelength sliders. I still like my little mashup but I look forward to playing…

Orbiting Frog has been a busy place in 2008! We are only a small way into the year but already Orbiting Frog seems to have overspilled to the extent to which I feel the need to recap and regroup. So just in case you missed anything, here is a quick…

This week’s featured item from the Orbiting Frog Shop comes from the Astronomy section. Coasters depicting the relative sizes of the planets let you see how your cups and mugs fit into the Solar System.

My Tippex comes in at about a Neptune whilst my mug is a Venus or a Jupiter…

Orbiting Frog is spreading out and heading into other parts of the internet. You can now buy science and astronomy based goodies via the Orbiting Frog Shop! T-shirts, mousepads, coasters and other paraphernalia will start to become available over the next few weeks and months as designs make their way…

Hello and welcome to the 40th Carnival of Space! I thought I’d add a bit of javascript into my page for a change - it’s the HTML equivalent of a mid-life crisis for the Carnival which is now at its 40th gathering. Congrats to the Carnival and all those involved.…

The recent pass of Comet Holmes and today’s close approach of Asteroid 2007 TU24 (shown below, image from space.com) have gotten me thinking again about open source astronomy. I have always been fascinated by the internet and how modern networking technologies bring things into one big mesh, and astronomy fits…

Stuart over at Astronomy Blog is breaking the bad news that the UK is now going to have to completely pull out of Gemini. All future UK observations are cancelled. These are not good times for UK astronomy.

The UK will no longer have access to the largest professional telescopes…

The Internet group Anonymous has declared war on Scientology and has begun by attacking the cult’s website with a denial of service attack. Usually content to mess with fanatical or disturbing online groups, Anonymous has said that it believes Scientology to be a threat to mankind and stated that they…

A quick glance at my blog statistics reveals that I was the recipient of a spike in traffic last Friday (see graphic). Sites used to have trouble when they got linked to by popular engines, such as Digg or StumbleUpon and of course anyone could be ’slashdotted’.

I seem to…

In the kind of circles I run in (you know, my high falootin’ scene) I am often asked where to find astronomy resources for the everyman. These people, and the occasional blog reader’s email are always told the same thing: download the Jodcast.

I have mentioned the Jodcast before on…