Amateur astronomy has a long history of discovery. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that the amateurs had a better time of it than the professionals.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the job of professional astronomers was to calculate important information such as the times of sunset and sunrise and to provide military and merchant naval fleets with … Read the rest of this article
Two ESA observatories have combined forces to show the Andromeda Galaxy in a new light. Herschel sees rings of star formation in this, the most detailed image of the Andromeda Galaxy ever taken at infrared wavelengths, and XMM-Newton shows dying stars shining X-rays into space.
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During Christmas 2010, ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories targeted … Read the rest of this article
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A partial solar … Read the rest of this article
Big Storm on Saturn: Did you get a telescope for Christmas? If so, point it at Saturn. A giant storm even brighter than Saturn’s rings is raging through the planet’s cloudtops. Amateur images and sky maps are featured on http://spaceweather.com.
Geomagnetic Storm in Progress: At the time this post is being published (late afternoon UT on Dec. 29) a … Read the rest of this article
The 33-year odyssey of NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 10.8 billion miles from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly … Read the rest of this article
On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.
It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.
“The August 1st event really opened our eyes,” … Read the rest of this article
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The Geminid meteor shower, which peaks this year on Dec. 13th and 14th, is the most intense meteor shower of the year. It lasts for days, is rich in fireballs, and can be seen from almost any point on Earth.
It’s also NASA … Read the rest of this article
A total lunar eclipse will take place on December 21, 2010, the second eclipse of this year. This eclipse happens early in the morning (GMT) and so will only be partially visible in Europe with the Moon setting just after totality. In the USA, particularly on the West coast, the Moon will be high overhead during totality.
Totality itself lasts … Read the rest of this article
Monitoring requested of the peculiar cataclysmic variable FS Aur
Dr. Vitaly Neustroev (U. of Oulu, Finland) requests continuous, nightly monitoring of the cataclysmic variable FS Aurigae during the current (2010-2011) observing season to clearly define the start and end times of several consecutive dwarf nova … Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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