The Polaris Flare

The Polaris Flare

Jan 20

Hearing that a nebula I knew little about was mapped by Herschel made me go and find out more. The Polaris Flare is a cirrus nebula that appears to surround the North Star. Here's a bit more about it - pretty pictures included.

Seeing Infrared

Seeing Infrared

Nov 17

I've recently become obsessed with thinking about the world in other wavelengths. The atmosphere usually absorbs my particular blend of astronomy but the thing that has really started to fascinate me is the infrared.

Space Telescopes on Google Earth

Space Telescopes on Google Earth

May 01

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.

Thanks for the Recent Activity

Thanks for the Recent Activity

Mar 05

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 overview of what's been going on here in the past couple of months. My experimentation with Google Earth and Google Sky has led to several items...

Playing with Google Sky

Playing with Google Sky

Oct 10

I have been playing with Google Sky recently. As a sort of case-study, I made for myself a little script that overlays data from NASA's SkyView website onto Google Sky. If you don't know, SkyView dubs itself a 'virtual telescope'. Essentially its a way to look up regions of the sky with any of a large number of surveys. Can you see what an astronomical object looks like in UV or in Infrared, for...