Beside me on the desk (I've moved my laptop onto the desk now that it is clear and accessible again now that I've done a fair bit of filing) is my phone, which I'm using to watch mission control of the Rosetta project where Philae has just been the first man made object to land on (rather than crash into) a comet. Comet 67P in fact. I started ( Read more... )

I'm a volunteer at the local Observatory, helping out with their star viewing nights, and we have a more or less monthly meeting to do training and that sort of thing. Last night's also coincided with an occultation of Jupiter by our moon. So we kept the talk bit initially short and headed up to the telescopes where we had a look at first one of ( Read more... )

Among the things I dealt with today ( Read more... )

Perth Observatory has one of these every year and they're usually interesting (I volunteer up there in my spare time). This year though it's less about the actual astronomy and about one of the Astronomers. Which may prove interesting to some of my friends of the feminist persuasion.

( Advertisment details: 25th Feb, 8pm, Observatory )

While the day did not start out promising, the picnic I went to for a friend's birthday was pleasant, (at least 7 hampers from D & K's wedding were in evidence ( Read more... )

(initial wording borrowed from talmor)
If you're interested in volunteering at the Observatory, there's a recruitment drive on now to try and get some new people for the start of the tour season. Details are on the Observatory web page (and yes, there really is a spelling mistake in the word 'volunteer' in the URL - not my fault ( Read more... )

The recently discovered 'red square' nebula does live up to its name. Remarkably symmetrical and just oriented right to us that the effect of the hourglass shaped nebula from the dying star does look like a square ( Read more... )

Last night was meeting/training night for the Perth Observatory Volunteers and after getting through the meeting part some of us (including myself and cricketk) headed up to the telescopes for a bit of learning and passing on of wisdom ( Read more... )

Well, I, cricketk and some other observatory volunteers went up to the top floor of the 24 inch dome to try and see comet McNaught. And indeed we did. The news photos are misleading; to the naked eye it is a small bright spot (and while it is bright it is also relatively near the sun so it's against twilight). If you're lucky you might just make out the ( Read more... )

The Perth Observatory is recruiting a new intake of volunteers to help run the star viewing nights (held a few nights a week from October-April each year). The volunteers (usually two for each tour night) help two staff handle two tour sessions, each with around 36 people on three telescopes. No astronomical experience is necessary, you'll learn ( Read more... )