Last night’s lunar eclipse was all over over social media feeds this morning. The eclipse coincided with the moon at perigee – its closest distance from earth, making it appear up to 14% larger in diameter. The coincidence of supermoon (perigee) and blood-red eclipse last occurred in 1982, making last night’s occurrence a spectacular event, with unusually clear […]
Of course there’s a lot to do on board the International Space Station, but for an Italian astronaut, good coffee has to be a priority! So Samantha Cristoforetti became the first person to brew and drink an authentic espresso in space, and in doing so she paid tribute to a fictional female space pioneer who never […]
One of the topics in our house this weekend was the possibility of interstellar travel using generation ships, among other things (it’s that kind of house). We had watched a documentary about the planets discovered by the Kepler mission, which prompted the question: how would you even get there? My eldest was horrified at the prospect of a […]
The Music of the Spheres is an ancient idea that there is a kind of universal music which is related to the movement of heavenly bodies like the Sun, the Moon and the planets. And although it turns out that Comet 67P, the focus of the Rosetta mission, is more of an ugly duckling than a perfect sphere, […]
Tonight’s monthly lecture by Astronomy Ireland is all about soil. If the human race is to become a space-faring species, we will need to think about soil, what it is, and where we are going to find it in space. Martian soil is toxic. Planting crops in it would be like sowing seed in bleach as the soil […]
This week, the Rosetta spacecraft reached the destination it’s been working towards since its launch in 2004, and for many years before that: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. On RTÉ’s Drivetime on Wednesday, Kevin O’Rourke of The Planetary Society, pointed out that this project has become the life’s work of a generation of scientists, including many here in Ireland. It’s a mission on an […]
I love this. It’s the kind of thing scientists talk about on their lunch break. Then they spend the rest of the afternoon working it out![youtube]http://youtu.be/w8I25H3bnNw[/youtube] OK – so this ‘up-close moon-sized mirror’ thing is cool (if a little scary), but I’d still really like to know what kind of satellite actually would create a disco-ball […]
The Juno spacecraft is on a mission to Jupiter and will arrive in 2016. Meanwhile, it’s building up speed to get there, and that involved a fly-by of Earth last month, using the gravity of its home planet to give it a push along the way. As it passed, its cameras captured pictures of the […]
