Friday, June 29, 2012

This Is Our Planet

This is a really cool time-lapse video, created using images from the International Space Station.

   
(Video source; image source)

 Very very awesome!

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Moon Landing

Todays xkcd comic deals with the moon landing. And it's brilliant!

(Click for full comic!)

Sunday, June 24, 2012

MRI of a Flower

This is an MRI of a flower, as the title says. And it's super nifty.

(Source - check out the entire blog, there's some amazing images!)

Reminds me a little of a firework.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Sigh...

This is the current sky situation in Ireland. 


Clouds, clouds, and more clouds. Oh, and a bit of rain thrown in for good measure.

I miss the stars.

There's nothing for it. I'm going to have to move to Hawaii!

Monday, June 18, 2012

Tour of the Moon

This is a really cool video. I love the moon! Unfortunately it's been hidden behind a huge bank of cloud for the last week or so, so this is the best I can do!


Saturday, June 16, 2012

Go Voyager, Go!!

Official word from NASA this week is that Voyager 1 has just about reached the edge of the solar system!


This is really exciting news, Voyager 1 will be the first man-made object to exit the solar system. It is completely amazing to me that we can still communicate with the spacecraft, and receive data from it... I sometimes can't get phone reception in Tesco!


FYI, it takes the information sent by Voyager 1 16 hours and 38 minutes to get back to Earth, travelling a distance of about 17.8 billion km. Amazing.

Voyager 1 is the probe that took the 'Pale Blue Dot' photo and also carries Carl Sagan's 'Golden Record'. And it's one of my very favourite spacecrafts!

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Project 365

It's raining. Again.

Like proper torrential rain. Everyone got sent home from work early today (I work in a wildlife park) because there was no point in us being there. We have the fire lighting at home and it looks like November outside. Ridiculous!

So I've not gotten to take my scope out in ages! To cheer myself up though, I bought a new camera. It's an instant camera too, one that I've wanted for absolutely ages! A Fujifilm Instax mini 7s! It's arriving tomorrow and I'm so excited! I'm considering doing a year of instax photos... maybe 52 weeks, or 12 months... the film is way too expensive to do a photo a day! We shall see!

This is my last Project 365 effort, completed in 2011. I took one photo every single day for a year. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it, and got to know my camera tons better in the process. And it's nice to look back over the year and see what I was up to!


Thursday, June 7, 2012

Transit of Venus 2012

Yesterday was transit day! Having made a quick solar filter the night before, and set my alarm for 4 in the morning, I was just crossing my fingers that there would be no clouds. But as soon as I woke up, I could hear the predicted rain tapping on my window. I was pretty bummed, but decided to check outside for myself. And lo and behold, there were a few breaks in the clouds towards the east.

So with more than a little excitement, I dragged my friend Darren out of bed and we loaded up the car with the telescope, filters and raincoats. We left my house at about 4.20am, and headed to the city to pick up another friend, Brendan. After that our basic plan was to drive towards the sunrise and hopefully find somewhere with a low horizon... Ireland is so freaking hilly! And we didn't have too much time to spare, as sunrise was 5.16am and the transit was ending in Ireland at 5.54am!

We drove down the dual carriageway, and eventually found a spot where the horizon was low enough. We pulled off the road and parked in a lane way. As we set up the telescope, we noticed that there was a gap in the clouds just where the sun was rising. I put the solar filter on and aimed at the sun. Which is significantly more difficult than I had expected. You can see nothing with the filter on and the sun is so bright it makes the red dot finder pretty much useless. But after a minute or two of faffing around, I managed to line it up.

On glancing through the scope however, there was a tiny thin band of cloud cover the area where Venus should have been visible. Gutted. We waited and watched until 5.54am, but we had no luck. As the sun rose, it hit a huge cloud and all but disappeared.

(Darren and Brendan star in Sunrise Kingdom)

It was pretty disappointing, but we still had a fun morning! The sunrise was beautiful, no-one damaged their eyes, and we had a good laugh in the car. And you know, only 105 years til the next transit!

So again, it was back to virtual astronomy! I spent a while when I returned home looking at photos and videos online. And boy are there tons of those...




(This is one seriously epic video - source)

So despite not actually getting to see Venus, we had a great day. After getting a few hours sleep, we headed to the beach with my sister, her boyfriend and flatmate, and had a barbecue! Good times all round! 


Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Welcome to Science - Zen Pencils

Tuesdays Zen Pencils featured the words of the brilliant Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy. It's all kinds of wonderful...

(Click image to view)

Check out the full comic here!

DIY Solar Filter

My solar film that I ordered from Green Witch arrived today! Just in time for the transit of Venus tomorrow!

So I've bunged together a quick solar filter. There's tons of tutorials online with good directions for making them... The biggest thing is to make sure that there are no holes or damage to the film, as you can do serious damage to your eyesight observing the sun through a telescope.


We've been given about a 90% chance of clouds for the morning, but my alarm is set for 4am, and we're giving it a go anyway!

Fingers firmly crossed!!