This month ……. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31). On a collision course with the Milky Way it will be visiting us “shortly”

The Andromeda Galaxy is one of the closest galaxies to our own Milky Way and is travelling in our direction at approximately 100 to 140 kilometres per se...

27th November 1783

The first reference to black holes is mentioned by John Michell, an English natural philosopher, in a paper for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. He called them "dark stars". Michell suggested that there might be many "dar...

The Southern Cross is an iconic constellation steeped in our nation’s history and culture. The photograph in this post was taken by Geoffrey Wyatt, Senior Education Producer Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

The Southern Cross is the smallest of the 88 cons...

Sunspot activity for the month of September remained extremely low however, on the 1st September two very small Bxi spots were observed in AR12748 and remained on the solar disc the following day as a single Axx spot.

No further Sunspots were seen on the Sun for the res...

EVENTS

31st October 1992

Pope John Paul II pardons Galileo for his views. The Catholic church condemned Galileo in 1633 for his subversive views, namely that the Earth revolved around the Sun. He lived under house arrest for the rest of his life. Pope John Paul II formal...

Coronal Holes were observed at the end of July, beginning of August by Space Weather.com - these are shown in the image above from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, recorded using very sophisticated imaging equipment. 

However, through my telescope in the Southern Hemi...

In addition to the informative talks at our monthly meetings Sydney City Skywatchers (SCS) offers or assists at public sky viewings. Over the past couple of years members have taken their telescopes, binoculars and enthusiasm to astronomy events at Sydney Observatory a...

This month Pluto…. Once our ninth planet Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet’ in 2006. However, with the New Horizons mission enigmatic Pluto, once shrouded in mystery, is giving up its secrets. The image below is Pluto photographed by the LORRI and Ralph instruments ab...

26th September 1905

Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity is published. It is the generally accepted and experimentally confirmed physical theory regarding the relationship between space and time and contains one of the most famous equations, e=mc2, which in simple te...

For the month of July, 2019 and during my 21 days of solar observations I did not see any Sunspot activity.

The only activity that was seen were Prominences. These were mostly faint and small.

The most prominent was on the 8th reaching 47,000km in height, the 9th a Hedge...