by Gordon | Jun 29, 2012 | Interstellar space
As summer arrives, the most spectacular seasonal event in our night skies occurs as the central hub of our galaxy wheels into view. Viewed from the Earth, our galaxy appears as a glowing band arcing across the night sky, the Milky way. As we orbit round the Sun, our...
by Gordon | Dec 1, 2011 | Interstellar space
The Nobel Prize for Physics has just been offered to the three scientists, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, who found evidence in 1998 that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. It was Edwin Hubble who first showed that the universe was...
by Gordon | Sep 13, 2011 | Interstellar space
The Ancient Mayan calendar calculates aeons in multiples of 394 years, counting from the Mayan day of creation, over 5,000 year ago. The 13th aeon comes to an end in December, 2012. Some people think the world will come to an end as well. Their fear has been...
by Gordon | May 24, 2011 | Interstellar space
In 1974, a radio message, written by Carl Sagan, was sent to the Globular cluster, M13, in the constellation of Hercules. Since the cluster is 25,000 light years away, a reply by return of post cannot be expected for another 50,000 years. If it wasn’t a joke, it was a...
by Gordon | May 24, 2011 | Interstellar space
Stars are thermonuclear fireballs so massive that as the energy is being blasted out, the core is collapsing under its own gravitational weight. For millions or billions of years, the two forces are balanced in a fearsome equilibrium. Sirius, our brightest star, is in...
by Gordon | May 24, 2011 | Interstellar space
According to Arabic legend a ghoul is an evil demon that lurks in graveyards and feeds off the dead, a chilling thing to see, eyeing you from the shadows! Yet Arabic astronomers named a star after it because it winks at you from the depths of the night. Known as...
by Gordon | May 24, 2011 | Interstellar space
Red Dwarfs may need orbiting satellite telescopes to be viewed, but they are more like our own sun than the colossal stars that make up most of the visible stars. Of the 375 stars that have been identified by telescopes to be within 33 light years of our sun, most of...
by Gordon | May 24, 2011 | Interstellar space
Scorpio belongs to a massive belt of stars forming a halo 2000 light years across, known as Gould’s belt, the most prominent feature in our region of the Milky Way. On one side lies Scorpio, on the other Orion, with the most brilliant constellations of the Southern...
by Gordon | May 24, 2011 | Interstellar space
A minor star, τ Bootis, in the constellation of Bootes, has emerged from relative obscurity to instant celebrity by having a planet detected in orbit around it. Since 1995, over 300 stars have been identified with accompanying planets. Planets around other...
