Apollo 17, the last of the Apollo missions, lands on the Moon. Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, still holds the distinction of being the last man to walk on the Moon as no humans have been back since. The mission carried the only trained geologist to walk on the lunar surface, Lunar Module Pilot...
Aurora are sporadic, faint visual phenomenon associated with geomagnetic activity that occurs mainly in the high latitude night sky. These can be spectacular and moving. According to Geoffrey Wyatt, Senior Science Educator for the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences:
On Boxing day this year there will be an annular eclipse which will be a surprise to many.
Even though I am a keen amateur astronomer, this eclipse will be too close to Christmas to justify a long road trip from the southern states to the Northern Territory, northern Queensland or northern Western Australia, espe...
Sunspot activity on the Sun is now proving to be very rare as the Solar Cycle 24 is now at minimum. Not one Sunspot was observed by me for the whole of the month. The only activity seen on the face of the Sun was a very small faint Filament seen on the first of October about 60° east and 10° south.
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 second. In about 4.5 billion years the Andromeda Gala...
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 "dark stars" in the universe, and today astronomers bel...
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 constellations spanning only six degrees from north to...
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 rest of the month.
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 formally apologized for the "Galileo Case" in the first o...
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 Hemisphere the Sun appeared far less exciting and I obs...
