My first timelapse!

So last night I spent 3 hours outside, with my laptop hooked up to my camera, drinking tea, fiddling with camera settings and trying not to bump off the tripod in the dark, all in an attempt to create my first timelapse video. There's poor exposure, light pollution and compression artifacts aplenty, but I'm still rather proud of it!

(Note the really really horrible orange glow - stupid city!)

There's lots's I'll have to fix next time, but for a first try, I think it looks ok! Already looking forward to the next clear night!

My telescope is shipping on Monday though, so that's at least a week of guaranteed clouds!

But yay, telescope!!!!

This. A Thousand Time, This!

My sister sent me this today.

Sort of sums up what it is I love so much about astronomy and space... 

-------------------------------------------------------------

A friend then posted this to my facebook page!

Love!

This picture is currently making me really happy.

(Source)

This is a press shot of the interior of a prototype crew vehicle for the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. 

And it looks totally awesome!

(Source)

Seeing this launch with humans on-board will be so fantastic!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In other exciting news, I ordered my first telescope a couple of days ago! After much deliberation, I decided on this gorgeous thing, the Skywatcher Explorer 130p! Unfortunately there is apparently a telescope shortage at the moment, so I'm not sure when I will actually get it... Fingers crossed it's soon though, I'm dying to get out there! 

Our place in the Universe

There's not a whole lot I can say about this picture really. It aims to show our place in the universe and give some idea of the scale of it.

(Definitely view this full-size!)

It seems almost impossible to grasp the size of the universe, and I would like to say that this helps, but I still can't quite wrap my head around it.

For more mind-blowingness, there's a high-res version here. National Geographic did a pretty nice version too, check it out here.

Amazing stuff.

The World of the Dinosaurs

It's that time again! A new Symphony of Science video!! And this one's about dinosaurs!

I've been looking forward to this one for ages, and it certainly didn't disappoint! 

Check out the rest of the series here! Downloads available here!

FUCK YEAH DINOSAURS!!

Oh, what a night!

Sky status: Finally clear!

What an absolutely spectacular night out! Not a cloud in the sky! Jupiter and Venus are shining brigthtly in the west, with Mars just rising in the east. I got a few nice shots off too...

(I can see other planets from my back garden!)

(Venus and Jupiter with a plane and a ship passing)

I then decided, without much hope, to pull out my Dad's old binoculars, aimed them at Jupiter and lo and behold, the four Galilean moons were clearly visible! It's the first time I've seen them, and it was so awesome! Considering the serious amount of light pollution and the not-exactly-high-powered binoculars, I was amazed to see anything at all! 

Here's a pretty good rendering of what I could see, using Stellarium.

(According to Stellarium, the moons are, from top left to bottom right, Callisto, Europa, Io and Ganymede)

I spent much longer than I should have outside in the cold, my fingers are now numb and typing this is difficult, but it was so worth it. Going to head back out in a minute, with gloves and a mug of tea this time...

Science, beer and a green bow tie

This is awesome!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Clear skies? Not so much...

Sky status: Cloudy.

There is a great Venus-Jupiter conjunction taking place over the next few days. Probably the best one for, and in, a long time. And I'm stuck in stupid cloudy Cork. And the forecast is only for more cloud. Lame.

Here's a photo I took 2-ish weeks ago, when Venus and Jupiter were much further apart, hanging out near the moon. They were amazingly bright...

Fingers crossed for a clear night tomorrow...

Inspiration

So for my first blog post, I guess I should explain where the current title and header of the blog come from. Well simply enough, it's a sunset on Mars. A sunset on another planet. A planet that, at it's closest point, is 54 million kilometers away. And that picture was taken by a robot that we put there.

Every time I see it, it just blows my mind.

It's beautiful.

     (source)

There's also an amazing video of the sunset:

More information about the image can be found here and more about the Mars Rovers here and here.

So that's it. A Martian Sunset.