This month, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is going to have its 2009 general assembly. One topic that may come up for discussion is Pluto’s right to be called a planet. Which is really the topic of how to define a planet. And as we shall see below, although Pluto has been the driver for …
Category Archives: Science
More Apollo Goodness
In addition to all of the links I put in my last post, here are two more: We Choose the Moon is the complete realtime 40th anniversary experience. It’s a Flash crap-fest unfortunately, and you have to sit through an introduction that shows you what’s what (and I can’t find any way to skip it), but …
We Have Lift-Off!
40 years ago this day[1], arguably the greatest achievement in human history lifted off from Pad LC 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Certainly there have been giant steps in all sorts of fields of human endeavour throughout history, but my feeling is that at the pinnacle is this: Apollo 11. Everything else …
Comet McNaught Again
Contrary to what I first thought about the view of Comet McNaught getting fainter and fainter, it just keeps getting better. Now that it’s further away from the sun, the comet can be viewed against a much darker background, and even though the comet is “fainter” than it was when it was closer to the …
Comet McNaught
In case you’re not aware, there’s a pretty cool celestial event occurring right now: a comet has appeared that is the brightest since 1965. Comet C/2006 P1, also known as Comet McNaught after its Australian discoverer Robert McNaught, is very visible in the evening sky (barring clouds of course), appearing in the south-west sky slightly …
The Final Frontier
Every once in a while, space photography throws up an instant classic, and recently a couple of photos have turned up that deserve to join the many that have come before. Before I get to those two recent images, I’ll give you a quick tour of what I think are some of the most iconic …