Space, Science, Technology
Elephant's Trunk Nebula SHO 20 light years long, and 2,400 light years away, this dark, dense nebula is part of a star-forming region (IC 1396). The Elephant’s Trunk itself is thought to contain several very young protostars. At the very top of the trunk you can see a tiny star that has ignited fusion and... Continue Reading →
Deneb-Sadr and (some of) the Milky Way in Cygnus. Taken from Provence, France. Thought I would look back at one of my first attempts at imaging one of my favourite parts of the sky. Sadr is nearly dead centre, and Deneb is up and to the left of it. You can start to see the... Continue Reading →
The North America Nebula (NGC 7000) and neighbouring Pelican Nebula (IC5070 and IC5067) in Cygnus, near Deneb. A bright emission nebula, partially obscured by dust along the line-of-sight. These combine to create the distinctive shapes, which resemble the Southeastern coastline of the USA, and Gulf of Mexico; and Pelican - hence the names. This LRGB... Continue Reading →
Today's partial Solar eclipse is off to a great start here in Witney, where the cloud cover is working as a perfect solar filter. The eclipse culminated here as a smiling, Cheshire cat-style grin 🙂
Another paper for the Milky Way Project. The Yellowballs began on the very first day of the Milky Way Project when a user asked me 'what is this?' and I wasn't sure so jokingly called it a '#yellowball', since that's what is looked like. We use hashtags on talk.milkywayprojct.org, and that user, and a few... Continue Reading →
Line 1. Let’s start with 'typical' humans. The average human adult male is 1.75 metres tall - that's 3.83 cubits or 5.74 feet. The average female is 1.62 metres - that's 5.4 light-nanoseconds or 0.008 furlongs. You live on Earth (Sol d, perhaps?). This is an Earth-like planet in a Sun-like star system. The third planet of eight... Continue Reading →
Hubot is an open source chatbot created by GitHub. It's used by various companies, groups, and other techie types, to control systems, gather information, and put moustaches on things - all via chat interfaces. Hubot can be adapted to work via IM, GTalk, Twitter, IRC, and other platforms. 'Chat Ops' is a growing trends, and because... Continue Reading →
This was an amazing week. On Wednesday the Rosetta spacecraft launched the tiny Philae lander on a 10km journey to the surface of a comet: a mountain-sized rock, millions of miles from Earth. This was a first that touched many around the world, millions of whom who followed the event online. It took ten years to... Continue Reading →
H₂O might be the most familiar chemical compound on the planet. Many people know that water is H₂O, but most wouldn't think about what that means in a chemical sense. Water is a remarkable molecule made of two Hydrogen atoms bound to a single Oxygen atom: H, H, and O. Water's special properties give us life... Continue Reading →
I’ve been called a lot of things but ‘rebel’ hasn’t come up too often. Not that I mind. As part of a Mazda campaign, I’m being highlighted as one of four TED Fellows* who are ‘Mazda Rebels’. The other three are thoroughly impressive and I recommend you take a look. There’s an online vote where... Continue Reading →