UK Eclipse 2015 Photos

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 🙂

A Tour: From You to the Largest Structure in the Universe

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 […]

An Open Chatbot for Astronomy: @botastro

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 […]

Electrolysis of Water: with Pencils and a 9V Battery

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 […]

Mazda Makes My Year by Calling Me a ‘Rebel’

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 […]

8 Images That Can Totally Change Your Perspective

I got into a conversation recently about how some astronomical photos can totally change your whole perspective of yourself and your place in the Universe. There’s several images that come to mind right away – here are my own favourites: 1. The Milky Way (from a very dark location) Seeing the night sky from a […]

Star Trek: The Rewatch

Warning: 400 words of geekery ahead! I’ve embarked on an extremely nerdy and wonderful new project: a podcast about rewatching Star Trek. Each week we encourage listeners to watch the same episode we have, and then we’ll dissect and discuss it in deliciously geeky detail. My cohost in this trek beyond the podcasting frontier is friend and fellow […]

The littleBits Exoplanet Detector: A NAM 2014 Hack Day Project

Yesterday was the Hack Day at the UK National Astronomy Meeting 2014 in Portsmouth. I organised it with my good friend Arfon Smith of GitHub, formerly Zooniverse. We wanted to try and start a new NAM tradition – it went well so maybe we did. I’m psyched that .Astronomy got to help make it happen […]

I Went to Norway to See the Aurora

I was lucky enough to visit Norway last week. I lead a group chasing the aurora (as best you can in cloud!) over the top of Norway from Tromsø to the Russian border – and back again. We were on a boat. Being that my favourite photographer was with me, we got some great shots […]

1.6 Tonnes of Rubbish Burning Up in the Atmosphere

Albert Einstein was ESA’s 4th Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). After delivery lots of supplies to the International Space Station if departed last week carrying 1.6 tonnes of waste and garbage. Each ATV mission ends with the spacecraft burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere and this one burnt up on November 2nd at 12:04 GMT over the […]