I write this while on a ship in the South Atlantic travelling from the Falkland Islands to South Georgia on a wildlife expedition to see the amazing creatures and plant life in the polar regions and Antarctica before the environment is altered through climate change. Image Credit: Glynn Bennallick To get here, on the way down south to Buenos Aires, I glanced out of my plane window at night over the wing to the…

The press are calling C/2023 A3, ‘Comet of the century’ A slight exaggeration perhaps, but it is certainly the best we have seen since C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) back in 2020. This is the view you get if you look towards the West for the next couple of weeks. The markings show date ( sorry, only available in American Month, then Day format) and the best optimum viewing time. C/2023 A3 is now at a…

The fear of the number 13, known as triskaidekaphobia, ties into the asteroid Apophis’s close Earth approach on Friday, April 13, 2029. Despite no collision risk, Apophis’s proximity provides an unprecedented chance for scientific study, offering insights into planetary defense and the solar system’s early composition, observed by global space agencies….

Sh2-129 Squid Nebula (HOO with RGB stars) from multiple nights in 2022. 29hrs of data gathered. Some of it very difficult to process as the ZWO 7 Nm OIII filter allowed the brightest stars to bloat horribly. The blue nebulosity behind those bright stars has been lost in the processing. I am making a case, to myself, for the purchase of an Astrodon 3Nm OIII filter because I have other targets whose data could…

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), B. Johnson (CfA), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), P. Cargile (CfA). Generally, we are all a nosy bunch. Since 1950 many people have loved being flies on the walls in Ambridge to hear the drama and gossip of several families in The Archers that don’t actually exist. The genealogical roots of many celebrities have been investigated with a fine tooth comb over the years in…

Mark Godwin captured an extraordinary image of the ISS crossing the Sun on July 27, 2024, at 15:24:46 UT using his new ZWO Seestar S50 Smart telescope. The impressive still was extracted from a 4-second video sequence….