Category Archives: Astronomy

Comet NEOWISE – catch it if you can

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Stephen

Comet NEOWISE has come but not yet gone. If there is no cloud cover for the next night or two, you might be able to catch its wispy presence low in the north-west before it fades from view. Don’t feel bad … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy | 2 Comments

Transitory Mercury

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Stephen

I wasn’t sure I was going to get to see today’s celestial encounter. The forecast was for blanket cover by early afternoon and the blue skies of the morning had largely filled with cloud by lunchtime, when the transit was due … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy | Tagged | Comments Off on Transitory Mercury

Mars Attacks (the senses)

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Stephen

Last night on Twitter someone posted a ‘selfie’ taken by the Mars Curiosity rover. It’s quite a photograph, particularly since it captures a fantastic piece of human technology amidst the landscape of another planet. The detail is what makes the … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Science | Tagged , | Comments Off on Mars Attacks (the senses)

Tripped up by the light fantastic

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Stephen

Yesterday I went to Mars. I stood on the surface and gazed at the dusty red ground, illuminated as far as the pink horizon by sunlight weakened from a journey that is a 100 million kilometres longer than the distance to … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Tripped up by the light fantastic

Passing By

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Stephen

I was determined not to miss the transit of Venus today. Life’s too short. But this week I have relocated to St Raphael in the south of France for a conference on picornaviruses and had to leave my telescope behind. Despite … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Scientific Life | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Fabulous night

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Stephen

Tonight, at the end of an exhausting day, I have few words, but it was beautifully clear so I have taken some pictures of the night sky. And made a short film. The photographs are by no means exemplary. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Rings of Saturn

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Stephen

It has been a beautifully clear and sunny day – perfect weather for a barbecue. We dined and chatted with our guests as the afternoon turned to dusk and then the stars began to wink in the night sky. After … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Science | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Sun Spot

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Stephen

I have been working my way around the solar system with my telescope. The moon was easy to spot. And Jupiter and Saturn were not so very difficult to find, though they proved to be beyond my photographic capabilities. Over the … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Science | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

Moon Boon

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Stephen

It cannot have escaped your attention this past weekend that the Earth was treated to a supermoon. The correct terminology for this felicitous event is a perigee syzygy, but the reasons for the interesting nomenclature need not detain us. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Blogging, History of Science, Science | Tagged , | 15 Comments

Small and Very Far Away

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Stephen

As Father Ted might have explained it to Dougal, this one is very small: Atom but that one is far away. Mars (NASA) And yet it is the distant planet and not the nearby atom that seems to excite the … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , , | 54 Comments

Snapshots of 2010

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Stephen

I wasn’t going to do a review of the year’s blogposts but, on the off-chance that the recent move to the shiny new site at Occam’s Typewriter has attracted some new readers, I thought I would provide a brief guide … Continue reading →

Posted in AltMed, Astronomy, Blogging, History of Science, Libel Reform, Protein Crystallography, Science, Science & Politics, TV review | 5 Comments

Cosmos and Kapoor

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Stephen

Having delighted in Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man earlier this year, I sat down to watch Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, which several commenters had recommended to me. You can read what I thought of it in my guest post at … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Communication, TV review | 2 Comments