AstronomyQuest

96% of Our Universe is Missing - What Can the Matter Be?

It's an embarrassment of gargantuan proportions that lies at the heart of modern physics, a kind of cosmic elephant in the room. Put simply, physicists realize that when we look out 13.7 billion light years across the visible universe with our telescopes,... Read >

When It Comes to Stars... Size Matters!

One of the really awesome and mind-blowing aspects of astronomy is the sheer immense scale of the distances between planets, stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters. Our everyday terrestrial notions of scale, size, and distance must be discarded, even if we j... Read >

Look Again at the Big Dipper!

If there's one constellation in the Northern Hemisphere that most living there learnt as a child, it's The Plough, or Big Dipper. Truth be told, it's not actually a constellation at all, it's called an asterism -- a pattern of stars seen in Earth's sky wh... Read >

Observing the Glorious Hercules Cluster (M13)

The stunning Hercules Cluster (M13, NGC 6205), also called the 'Great globular cluster in Hercules' is perhaps the most famous globular cluster residing in the Milky Way's halo. It is another astronomical jewel which is viewed best either using binoculars... Read >

Venus -- The Earth's Evil Twin Looks Spectacular After Sunset

My local Planetarium Director always has a tranche of phone calls from unwary members of the general public when Venus is bright and adorns our evening skies, shortly after sunset. Especially to anyone who is driving west it appears to move with your vehi... Read >

Superb Northern Summer Deep Sky Objects Move in From the East!

The year moves on, and so does the night sky. In the Northern Hemisphere, summer's deep sky objects start to make an appearance in the late evenings -- favourite bright stars such as Vega in Lyra and Arcturus in Boötes make a return from the east, and wi... Read >

Parallel Worlds - The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos

The remit of this book is staggering -- it is no less than the coverage of the development of cosmology from its beginnings in antiquity right up to the theory of the multiverse, and the fact that our universe may be just one of an infinite number, each p... Read >

Carl Sagan – A Life In The Cosmos

It's incredible to think that it's more than fourteen years since the world lost a most remarkable astronomer, pioneer exobiologist and populariser of science - Carl Sagan. A son of Jewish immigrants to the United States, Sagan was born in Brooklyn, N... Read >

Saturn - Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Skies

If there is one celestial object that is both readily visible in even the worst light polluted skies, and yet full of the astronomical "wow" factor, it has to be Saturn, our solar system's beautiful ringed gas giant planet. For anyone new to telescopic ob... Read >