Society for Popular Astronomy

Then, there’s Attenborough’s “meteor” that wiped out the dinosaurs .

Apparently, over 60% of satellites are “commercial”, so we can reckon that a proportion of them are for trivial purposes such as the gambling industry.
Now, it’s being said that there are so many rocket launches that they contribute significantly to global warming.

Researchers at Durham University with take part in an international project, the Cosmos-Webb programme, that will survey a region near the constellation Sextans to trace the relationship between dark matter and remote galaxies farther back in time. They will utilise the James Webb Space Telescope (J...

That 88mm refractor yields good images Cliff. Some of your gear is from Optic Star. Due you know if the shop is still there, or is it all sold on the Web these days? I found the shop interesting to browse through. I purchased a PST and zoom eyepiece to use with it from them.

That’s a coincidence Mike. I too am suffering from severe vertigo, and seem to have the symptoms of ME. A blood test is being analysed. Not good news for skywatching. There’s the option of lying on our backs to get covered in slugs .

The first successful test flight, lasting under a minute, was performed with the ‘copter at 8:30am our time. More flights are to follow when the data from the first flight has been analysed. The flight established that lift is possible for a drone in Mars’s rarified atmosphere with the ‘copter’s rot...

When I observe Saturn with a low magnification, it appears oval-shaped rather than as a disc. Saturn’s light seems tired compared to Jupiter’s brilliance, so it might have had a nightcap effect for Mike.

NASA has announced that its Ingenuity helicopter has had its first attempted flight into Mars’s rarified atmosphere delayed until at least tomorrow, due to a technical problem. The problem was discovered when the ‘copter was having its rotators tested. If successful, Ingenuity will be the first mach...

Looks like a Sun flower, which is appropriate, don’t you think?

Does the white spot on the Sun have an official classification? It looks like a flaring site.

They could replace modules at the station with new ones. Originally, the ISS was intended to be considerably bigger, but mounting costs set a limit to its eventual size.

Early life was wearing hard hats at the time :wink: . Seriously though, a current theory for the origin of life says that the molten masses below craters formed by asteroid strikes cooled and created geothermal springs, rich in the nutrient chemicals necessary for life. Apparently, it only happened ...

I should add that the observation I made was supplemented by a double-stack observation. I attached the Lunt LS50f to the PST. This revealed a white patch on the solar disc. Lunt claims that it’s solar components don’t work with other solar makes, but the LS50f etalon works well with the PST, as it ...

The Sun is still in boring mode it seems, with little to see except for proms. The last solar maximum showed lots of detail: sunspots, proms, filaments and flares. This time round the Sun is taking its time to emerge from full minimum. This morning I was able to image several proms in the PST with a...

In 2019 an air leak was discovered in the International Space Station ( ISS ). Attempts to fix the leak have not been fully successful. Last year, technicians identified why cabin pressure had been affected. Other cracks where discovered in 2020 using an electron microscope and sealed, but there are...