This is more art than science, but it is very pretty. Stereoscopic 3D images give full colour and allow each nebula to show another dimension of beauty.

We just had a great star formation talk from Professor Ralf Klessen from the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University. During that talk he put up a great slide showing the famous Pillars of Creation from the Eagle Nebula (M16) in both infrared and the…

I recently saw a Digg article which linked to a space.com page about the 10 Strangest Things in Space. All but 2 of the items were not pictures at all but computer simulations, or artists impressions. So here to correct this injustice to phenomena everywhere I present the REAL 10 Strangest…

Wednesday’s seminar speaker was Robert Kennicutt, the principal investigator of the SINGS project (Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey). They have been using the Spitzer Space Telescope, launched 2003, to observe the dust content of the nearest galaxies.

Spitzer detects at a wide range of wavelengths in the infrared and submillimeter…

What follows is my submitted entry for the Wellcome Trust’s New Scientist Essay Competition 2007. There are prizes involved and the top one is publication of the essay in New Scientist. I am very inexperienced with such things, but thought I’d enter anyway, so just in case I don’t win,…

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…