We know that the shorter days of autumn and winter are here when in the darker evenings over the south east horizon come creeping up a set of four bright stars in a rectangle with a tight line of three stars in the middle. This is the constellation of Orion named after “Orion the Hunter” of Greek mythology. Imagine the top two stars are the Hunter’s shoulders with the bottom ones his knees. The…

Image Credit: NASA The American astronaut Jim Lovell died on 7 August aged 97. He went into space for NASA on four missions. In 1965 in Gemini 7 Jim spent 2 weeks in a cramped seat and in Gemini 12 in 1966 did 3 spacewalks outside the capsule. However, he will be remembered more as crew member of Apollo 8 being the first mission that sent 3 men to orbit the Moon in December…

On a recent visit to New Zealand’s North Island I stayed in a hotel next to a Maori village in Rotorua. There was a constant sulphurous smell of bad eggs and white steam clouds rising from the village caused by superheated boiling water gushing out of the ground showing it was very hot down under. This country was formed by the Pacific tectonic plate diving under the Australian plate causing volcanoes, mountains and earthquakes…

In April 1957 Sir Patrick Moore began his monthly “The Sky at Night” which is still going strong today making it the longest-running program with the same presenter in television history. Sir Patrick, in his own unique eccentric and fast talking way often referred to “The Summer Triangle” which is an asterism or distinct pattern of stars located in the northern sky. This is a title which he said he coined but the triangle…

You may have seen in the news last month that we had to keep our heads down as a piece of ancient Russian space junk was going to fall back to Earth with most of the world in the possible landing zone, including us. It finally plummeted harmlessly into the Indian Ocean on 10th May. Phew! This was one of the 35,000 bits of debris bigger than 10cm orbiting the Earth waiting to eventually…