May 22nd and 23rd will be providing some excellent opportunities for seeing the International Space Station from Europe and North America. The details of each sighting vary from place to place, but it is safe to say that the two days and nights will be offering some of the best sightings for a long time!

Continuing my series of posts regarding Google Sky and Google Earth, here is a KMZ file that will let you find some of the prominent and interesting space telescopes and satellites on Google Earth. This file includes real-time position tracking and 1 hour flight paths for 9 different space telescopes and satellites.

China’s Fengyun 1C satellite, which was destroyed intentionally by China last year, still presents a risk to satellites and other orbiting bodies. I have created a Google Earth file which will let you track the debris in real-time.

Trailers seem to be the ‘in thing’ these days. There is a (very long) trailer for the BLAST experiment’s movie somewhere out on the internet. Today, this very nice trailer popped up in my Twitter feed from Stuart at Astronomy Blog. It’s for the International Year of Astronomy, also known…

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.

ESA have released information on the incredible content of the skies above our heads. In their press release they outline what exactly is littering orbital space around the Earth.

The image here shows the view from above the North Pole of all low Earth orbit objects as of January 2008.…

I recently visited Moundville, Alabama. This ancient Creek city was discovered hidden in the woods just over a hundred years ago and presents a possible astronomical mystery. I have come to see it as the Stonehenge of Alabama.

Today is February 29th, the ‘extra’ day we are given every four years to bring the calendar back into sync with the actual time it takes the Earth to go around the Sun. Leap years are actually much more complicated than most people think with exceptions every 100 years, but…

So I didn’t get to see the lunar eclipse last night because of the cloud. But no matter! Thanks to the internet I already have a wealth of videos and images available. The one above is from Flickr user Viaan. Here are some of the best I have spotted so…

In my previous post, detailing tonight’s Lunar Eclipse (the last until December 2010), I included a YouTube video I made showing what you might expect to see if it is clear. Well included here is the same video plus two more showing the same event from the perspective of the…

This Wednesday there will be a total eclipse of the Moon. Totality will last for 51 minutes and will be visible throughout Europe, North America, the Pacific region and Northern Africa. The show kicks off at 00:35 GMT when the Earth’s penumbra touches the limb of the Moon. Totality occurs…

Found this nice little animated gif file via Digg. Worth a look, as it scales the Earth next to the other planets and some stars. Can’t find the original link now…

Discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on October 11 last year, this 150-600m asteroid will closely approach the Earth in the next few days. It will pass within 1.4 lunar distances (roughly 335,000 miles) on January 29th at about 8a.m. GMT. It will almost reach magnitude 10 between the 29th…

There’s a video going around the web of a UFO sighting on New Year’s Day in San Diego. As usual everyone says a whole lot about what is wasn’t.

You can find the video here at Daily Motion

I would guess that this is some part of some rocket reentering the…

If you haven’t already then now is the time to subscribe to the Twitter feeds I made for many cities around the world. As of about the 4th of October it will once again become dark enough that the International Space Station (ISS) will become visible in the evenings over…

Colorado Meteor
Originally uploaded by Mr Geoff.

Yes its that time of year again, get your 12 things ready and then pootle outside to watch the Perseids. This meteor shower peaks on Sunday night (I think) but you can catch some good shooting stars anytime up to about Tuesday really.

This photo…

There is a lot more to the universe than the light you and I can pick up with our eyes and brains. Although its a shame that we can’t see them naturally we can use technology to reveal the wavelengths of light normally invisible to us. Visible light is only part of the electromagnetic spectrum (a very small part) and I thought it would be interesting to see some familiar objects in unfamiliar ways.

I’m just prepping another post at the moment but came across this great animation on my travels. It shows Jupiter as seen from the Chandra satellite, which captures X-Ray information. As you see from the (hopefully moving) picture below, Jupiter is mostly invisible when seen in the X-Ray. You can however…

“These spectacular images are the most detailed pictures of Earth ever seen.” Or so says th article - however I’m not sure its quite so true as they don’t link to the high-res images themselves. However it is of note I feel.

read more | digg story

I had my first day working for SETPOINT Wales yesterday in their mobile planetarium, the Stardome. I went to Crickhowell High School and had a great (if tiring day) giving a space talk and showing, what felt like hundreds of children, the constellations.

The reason I like talking about space is…