Boulders a’bouncing on Mars…

I love HiRISE. I love it more than a politician loves their expense claim forms, even more than that annoyingly smug one with the frizzy hair on Eggheads loves himself. It’s just a fantastic instrument on a fantastic spaceprobe, operated by fantastic people who clearly love Mars. Every now and again one of its images makes [...]

A new look space station…

Wow… what a difference a few years makes..! The ISS started off looking like this… … and looked like this after a few more missions… Not too long ago it looked like this… And now, finally, after Discovery’s mission, it looks like this… How beautiful is that?! Look what we built! Isn’t that stunning? I [...]

Exoplanets – what’s all the fuss about?

… or should that be, “There’s no OTHER place like home… yet…”? Exo-planets – or “extra-solar planets” to give them their full title – are currently the coolest things in astronomy. Following the launch of NASA’s exo-planet hunting Kepler telescope, many people are now getting very excited about the prospect of finding Earth-sized worlds Out [...]

What’s in a name..?

Yesterday NASA announced the shortlist of names for the Mars Science Laboratory, and invited people to vote for their favourite via a website. Since then I’ve been pondering my vote. A lot. And I mean A Lot. Because I’m afraid to say – and here I mean absolutely no offense is meant towards any of [...]

Name the next Mars rover!

So, you’ve sent YOUR name to Mars (haven’t you? What’s keeping you?! I gave you the link and everything!), what next? Well, how about helping NASA actually name the rover your name is going to be riding? At the moment, the Mars Science Laboratory is simply known as “MSL”, which is accurate but not exactly [...]

Want to go to Mars..?

… me too! But booooo! we can’t. At least, not yet. But we can do the next best thing and send our NAMES to Mars…! How? Well, for the past few years NASA has encouraged people to participate in their unmanned missions by setting up websites that allows them to put their names on the [...]

“Spreading the word”…

I just had a FANTASTIC few of days telling and teaching people about astronomy, space exploration and the universe. This is now called “Outreach”, or “Outreach and Education”, but essentially it’s “Spreading The Word” about the wonders of the night sky, and the amazing things we’ve done, are doing and will do in space. On [...]

Changes to CUMBRIAN SKY

Following the recent fitting of a new pair of solar array “wings” to the ISS it is now magnificently bright in the night sky, far outshining Venus I thought last night, so I’ve decided to move all ISS visibility times to their own page, it just keeps things tidier. You can see a tab at [...]

When to see the ISS

If you are a UK reader – from Cumbria or anywhere else – and you want to watch teh space station crossing the sky, here’s the info you need. Just click on the picture below to bring up a full size version, then print it out for safe keeping. We have some fantastic “space station [...]

Batonaut – R.I.P

The shuttle Discovery docked safely and succesfully to the International Space Station last night… no damage was spotted on its underside when it performed its beautiful “backflip” before docking, and the two crews are now having a fine old time up in Earth orbit. This shuttle mission is going to see the ISS finally transformed [...]