World(s) of water…

Here in Cumbria it seems to have been raining since the day after the Big Bang. Everything is sodden. You don’t walk anywhere, you squelch, and splash and trudge. Every day, every single day, it rains at some point – and not just ‘rain’, but great deluges of icy, sleety rain thundering down from a charcoal [...]

Eddington AS MoonWatch Success!

Tada!!! The clouds parted, the rain stopped, and people flocked to the garden at Kendal’s Brewery Arts Centre tonight for the Eddington AS’s November “MoonWatch”! The event was scheduled to begin at 7pm, but there were already people waiting eagerly at the Brewery at 6.30 when I arrived to set up my ‘scope, and by [...]

Here we go again…

  After being out of the media spotlight for a few years, that ugly, green-brown rock you see above is about to hit the headlines again. In a big way. You see, that ugly looking chunk of stone is actually “ALH84001″, the most famous meteorite in history. ALH84001 is one of those rare “martian meteorites” – a [...]

“Space – what a waste of money…!”

How many times have I had that fired at me after I’ve given one of my Outreach talks? I’ve lost count. From now on I’m going to refer people who say things like that to this excellent blog article, which lists some excellent “space spin-offs”… http://onlinesciencedegrees.net/25-everyday-technologies-that-came-from-nasa

Perfect plumes…

I’ve been “into space” for a long time – a LONG time. Over three and a half decades, in fact. So I’m pretty hard to surprise and amaze now. Not hard to impress, not hard to delight, but hard to actually amaze. It’s not often that an image comes back from ‘out there’ that makes [...]

Waiting for word…

All around the world, planetary scientists and “space geeks” (and, as one of them, I use the term with love and respect!) are waiting anxiously to hear if the Mars Exploration Rover “Spirit” has started to move out of its dustbowl trap. It’s been stuck there for months now, bogged down in talcum-fine powdery sand, [...]

See the SPACE STATION!

This is a great time to see the International Space Station from the UK! Just go here http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/space-station-spotting for your full “How To” guide!

There’s no place like home…

I love Mars, as you all know – and if you didn’t know that, wow, where have you been?!?!? – and I often refer to it, only half-jokingly, as “my real home planet”. I love its volcanoes, its canyons and craters with a passion. I see an image of it taken by an orbiter, a [...]

The latest on Spirit…

There was a big news teleconference today, updating everyone on the situation with “Spirit”, the poor Mars rover that has been stuck in a sand trap for the past 6 months. I’ll paste the official press release in at the end here, but basically this was the news: * Spirit is in big, big trouble, [...]

More on Marquette…

Oppy is now getting up close and personal with “Marquette Island”, a great slab of layered rock that she first spotted a week or so ago. I’m covering the rover’s trip to Endeavour Crater on my “The Road to Endeavour” blog, and you can find lots of images of this new ‘island’ – like this [...]