Planets move relative to the stars always moving from west to east in the sky. Well almost always. Every once in a while, a planet will slow down in its apparent slide across the constellations each night. For a few nights it may even appear to have stopped. Then it…

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.

The Japanese Moon-mapping craft, Selene, has been busy. A preliminary release of what will be the best map of the Moon ever created, shows the topology and mineral content of the Moon’s surface.

Will Gater, who helped us out with the NAM Blog recently, is hosting the 49th Carnival of Space. There are some nice articles in it this week, particularly Out of the Cradle’s post on growing plants on other planets and Riding with Robots Victoria Crater animation.

Dugg from Daily Galaxy: NASA is serious about launching the most difficult mission ever attempted by the human race - putting an astronaut on Mars. The voyage will cover hundreds of millions of miles and take two and half years round trip.

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This one could just be filed under ‘this is really cool’. Also, I can’t believe it has passed me by my entire life. Have you ever heard of a solar furnace? It’s a James- Bond-esque creation which focusses light from the sun on a massive scale to heat a very…

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…

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…

We had a talk yesterday from Dr. Fabio Favata titled “Space Astronomy in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan”. Cosmic Vision is the European Space Agency’s peculiar name for its plan over the next decade and a bit. The talk was very good, and covered almost the whole breadth of ESA’s…

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…

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.…

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…

This is an awesome, and much discussed post from the Planetary Society blog: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001305/

…think to yourself: this is Mars. I’m staring through the eyes of a rover that was only supposed to survive three months, maybe six, possibly a little longer; yet it’s been four Earth years since Spirit landed,…

I’ll put this one to you as simply as possible. It’s a picture from one of the Mars rovers that appears to show a person (or a rock), walking along the Martian surface. This person (or rock, probably) looks so much like that classic Big Foot picture that it makes…

The MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Mercury on Monday evening in one of three scheduled slow-down fly-bys before it begins orbiting the planet in a few years. The first images (there are going to be a LOT of them) will now begin to appear. This image from a press release out…

Yesterday’s Astrolunch talk was given by Prof. Mike Disney on the Stability of the Solar System. It was the first of two talks, and in of itself was very informative. Prof. Disney discussed the history of the question of whether or not the Solar System is a stable system. The final…

Today at 1904 GMT, the NASA spacecraft Messenger will make its first approach of Mercury, the inner-most planet of our solar system. This evening’s approach is the first of three between now and 2011, designed to slow down the probe as it readies to begin orbiting the planet.

This will…