As the most visible man-made object in the night sky the International Space Station (ISS) is of significance to humankind. It takes humans from being explorers of space to being residents of space.
The…
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin and his colleagues on the Apollo 11 mission inspired generations to be interested in lunar exploration.
EPA/NASA
Like all relationships, our association with the moon has had its ups and downs.
In this series we’ve talked about the nature of the satellite and how we think it was formed – in a giant collision that…
How does the moon affect Earth’s inhabitants?
shutterstock.com
From encouraging the first steps of life migrating from the oceans to the land, to stabilising Earth’s axial tilt against chaotic excursions, the moon is often put forth almost as a magical ingredient…
A handout aerial image released by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service on 14 January 2013 shows the partly destroyed Siding Spring Observatory in the Warrumbungle National Park near Coonabarabran in New South Wales.
EPA/NSW Rural Fire Service
Four buildings containing telescopes at Australia’s largest astronomical observatory have suffered smoke damage in a bushfire, the Australian National University said today.
Access to the Siding Spring…
The SKA is on the horizon, but how do we get from here to there?
Pete Wheeler, ICRAR
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope has been on the cards since the early 1990s. It took until May of last year to find out where it will be built – in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand…
It’s long been suspected that Mercury’s poles are home to water ice. That speculation has now been confirmed.
NASA
Whenever I’m telling students or people at conferences about Mercury, I always describe it as the “heavy metal” planet. Many things on this closest planet to the sun are extreme, from its 88-Earth-day…
A total solar eclipse allows us to see the sun’s normally invisible corona.
Tarique Sani
Shortly after sunrise tomorrow morning the skies will go dark in northern Queensland. Many people, including myself and plenty from overseas, are flocking to Cairns to observe this celestial phenomenon…
The explosion of a super-luminous supernovae can emit as much light as our sun will in 10 billion years.
Rampant.Gaffer
By Jeffrey Cooke, Swinburne University of Technology
Supernovae are the brilliant, explosive deaths of stars. For a short time, these explosions can outshine an entire galaxy containing billions of stars.
A recently discovered rare class of supernovae…
Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to our own sun and appears to be home to at least one planet.
EPA/Davide De Martin/ESO
Earlier this week, a Swiss-based team searching for planets outside our solar system (exoplanets) published a paper in Nature announcing the detection of an Earth-mass planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri…
ASKAP will help scientists to tackle some of the biggest questions in radio astronomy.
Alex Cherney
Today, after several years of design and construction, CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is officially open.
The A$140m facility, built in the remote Murchison Shire of Western…
Things may not be as they’d previously seemed regarding the moon’s formation.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
New research published in the planetary science journal Icarus, shows the moon may have been formed by a glancing collision with an “impactor” in the violent days of the early solar system.
Contrary to…
What surprises are beyond the horizon for NASA’s spacecraft during its planned encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon?
NASA
Last week, scientists using one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Cameras announced the discovery of a small moon orbiting the dwarf planet Pluto – the fifth satellite discovered in orbit around…
There’s far more to the night sky than the human eye can see.
Joseph Dsilva
Humans have always had a deep affinity with the night sky.
Over millennia the stars have guided us in our travels, provided a grand canvas for the great stories of mythology and invoked a sense of wonder…
The transit, as seen from Sydney today.
Geoffrey Wyatt/AAP
Update: to observers on Australia’s eastern seaboard, the transit of Venus is now complete.
The two time-lapse videos below, provided by the University of Queensland, show Venus first passing in front…
Guillaume Le Gentil sailed the seas for many years to catch a glimpse of Venus in transit.
Brocken Inaglory
On Wednesday, as you’ll no doubt know by now, a rare celestial event will occur. Venus will pass between the earth and the sun – the transit of Venus. You might also already know that this cosmic spectacle…
Don’t look at the transit of Venus directly … but make sure you look at it.
Jan Herold
When Australia II won the America’s Cup yacht race in 1983, then-prime-minister Bob Hawke famously exclaimed: “Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum.”
Taking inspiration from this…
Everyone’s getting a slice of the SKA, whichever way you cut it.
swishphotos
Late last week, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) board chairman, John Womersley, announced that the future telescope will have more than one home: Australia/New Zealand and South Africa.
The announcement…
Trojans such as (1173) Anchises appear to have been caught in Jupiter’s orbit, mid-flight.
Dave Hosford
You’ll remember that, about a year ago, Canadian astronomers announced the discovery of a small asteroid sharing the earth’s orbit.
The asteroid in question, 2010 TK7, is a “planetary Trojan” – an object…
An artist’s conception of the Square Kilometre Array … which could live in South Africa or Australia/New Zealand.
SKA
The battle for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is heating up. The SKA board was scheduled to choose a site – South Africa or Australia and New Zealand – earlier this year but a decision…
The James Webb Space Telescope will search for stars in the dawning universe.
BOBXNC
When the Obama administration announced its proposed NASA budget in February, astronomers worldwide breathed a sigh of relief. Despite significant cuts in other areas, funding for the James Webb Space…
GRBs have puzzled astronomers for decades, and there is still plenty to learn.
EOS/A Roquette
Ever since they were discovered accidentally in the 1960s, gamma ray bursts (GRBs) have continued to amaze and puzzle astronomers worldwide. In nearly 50 years of research there seem to have been more…
New infrastructure is putting the Australian space industry on the map.
RSAA
Space exploration is one of the few science-rich human endeavours that captivates both expert and layperson alike. There is a mystery – a romanticism – associated with space research and technology that…
Two “new” black holes, in relatively nearby galaxies, are the largest ever found.
tsand
Black holes have long been the staple of science fiction, being monstrous beasts with a gravitational pull that prevents even light from escaping.
As well as being useful plot devices, offering mechanisms…
If the signs are right, fundamental equations of cosmology may need altering.
waljoris
A radical discovery by my colleagues and I – reported this week in Physical Review Letters – could help explain why it was possible for life (at least as we know it) to develop on Earth, but not in other…
We know the universe is vast, but how do we measure the distances between things?
Dave Scrimshaw.
Let’s talk numbers for a moment.
The moon is approximately 384,000 kilometres away, and the sun is approximately 150 million kilometres away. The mean distance between Earth and the sun is known as the…
Finding quasars will help us understand how galaxies were formed.
NASA
Today, the University of Melbourne’s Professor Stuart Wyithe was awarded the 2011 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year for his work on the origin of galaxies.
The multi-award winning…
Stars are immense, but the space between them is truly phenomenal.
chefranden
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Douglas Adams…
Science follows certain procedures, but does the media get the signal?
CSIRO
Recently my colleagues and I announced the discovery of a remarkable planet orbiting a special kind of star known as a pulsar.
Based on the planet’s density, and the likely history of its system, we concluded…
Stars shine, for sure, but PSR J1719-1438 is sporting some serious bling.
Robyn Beck/AFP
A planet has been found in our Milky Way galaxy that may be made entirely of diamond.
As reported in Science today, an international astronomy team led by Swinburne University’s Matthew Bailes, has discovered…
Warning: you may struggle to believe what you’re about to read.
Bluedharma
Just how big are the stars?
Earth feels quite big, what with it taking an entire day to fly between Sydney and London, and clearly the sun and moon are quite large in the sky.
But with virtually everything…
We may finally have an answer to a long-standing cosmic/ cosmetic issue.
NASA
As of today, we have a cataclysmic new explanation for one of solar system astronomy’s most long-standing questions: why do the near- and far-sides of the Moon look so different?
This new theory, published…
The vertical motion of the asteroid (in green) relative to Earth over several years.
Paul Wiegert, University of Western Ontario
This morning, the discovery of Earth’s first Trojan companion was announced by a group of Canadian astronomers.
The object in question, 2010 TK7, is a lump of rock just a few hundred metres across, and…
We still have plenty to learn about our own galaxy.
Doug Klembara
Welcome to the third instalment of If I had a blank cheque … a series in which leading researchers reveal what they could (and would) do in their discipline if money were no object.
Today we hear from…
Has NASA’s 30-year space experiment been worth it?
EPA/NASA TV
All going well, the final Space Shuttle mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Centre early on Saturday morning (AEST). This flight, being made by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, will be the 135th…
A computer-generated artists impression of the thousands of objects in orbit around Earth.
AFP
By Fred Watson, Australian Astronomical Observatory
Since the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 – the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 – countries around the world have been putting satellites and spacecraft into Earth orbit.
While the majority…
Is that a planet, a galaxy or a Rosetta Stone?
ichewmylips
A vital part of professional astronomy is collecting data using large telescopes. In many cases, these telescopes are national or international facilities, with time available to all through a competitive…
When a black hole devours a nearby star, bright gamma-ray flashes can result.
Mark Garlick (University of Warwick)
Some 3.8 billion years ago a star in the constellation of Draco wandered a little too close to a nearby black hole.
The star was violently torn apart by the black hole’s tidal forces, creating two massive…
Despite centuries of study and folklore, we’re still not over the moon.
~BostonBill~
What do Chile’s recent volcanic eruptions and tomorrow morning’s total lunar eclipse have in common? Well …
Just before sunrise, Earth’s shadow will totally hide the normally-bright moon for about 100…
Theories suggesting lunar influence on earthquakes have serious cracks.
penguinbush
With a total lunar eclipse set to occur just before sunrise (AEST) on Thursday, we can expect to see certain views regurgitated about our moon. Our satellite has been the focus of speculation and folklore…
What tasty treats await astronomers in the next few decades?
Lea/Flickr
Predicting the future is a mug’s game.
When I reflect back on what we thought we knew at the start of my research career in the mid-1990s, I sound like a wizened octogenarian, recalling a simpler time…
You wouldn’t believe what modern telescopes can do.
Professor Fumolatro/Flickr
Last week, scientists set a new distance record, seeing a burst of gamma-rays from a star that exploded when the universe was only 520 million years old. The light from this distant source has been travelling…
The universe teems with energy and matter we don’t understand.
stuant63/Flickr
In questioning the fundamental nature of the universe, cosmology regularly grabs the public’s attention.
But in an era in which we are observing deeper and more widely than ever before, our knowledge…
Is it a plane? No, it’s Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics.
William West/AFP
Watching films such as Superman Returns or The Day after Tomorrow, you would have seen dramatic sequences of surging water and crumbling buildings.
While doing so, mathematics was probably the last thing…
Is your stress from Venus, your pressure from Mars? Not likely.
Today, and for the next month, four major planets are aligned above us: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.
Are we interested? Of course we are.
From the very beginning of human history we’ve been obsessed…
There’s something happening, but it’s way above your head.
bluedharma/Flickr
Four planets – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus – will be aligned at dawn tomorrow. What does this mean? Should we be running for the hills?
You’d be forgiven for thinking so. A search on Google or YouTube…
Scientists believe dark matter makes up 23% of the universe.
NASA
By Jeremy Mould, Swinburne University of Technology
Dark matter has worked its way back into the news in the last few days with the completion of a detection experiment in a tunnel deep under the Italian Alps.
Researchers from Columbia University used…
Are CSIRO’s ASKAP antennas in Boolardy a precursor to greater things?
By Ant Schinckel, CSIRO
We know a lot about what the universe looks like and how it works. But what we’ve been able to figure out about the cosmos is dwarfed by all the things we don’t know.
How do galaxies, stars and planets…
Viewed from afar, the Milky Way might appear similar to the galaxy known as NGC 7331.
R. Jay GaBany/NASA
Where are we within our galaxy? How did our galaxy form? How did it evolve over the aeons?
Astronomers have been asking these questions for the past century, and have recently begun discerning the answers…
Hundreds of exoplanets have been discovered, but are we any closer to finding life?
AAP
In the late 1980s, when I was a young whipper-snapper just starting out as an astronomer, it was quite obvious some fields had an incredibly high profile and others were outré.
The sexy ideas at the time…
It is inevitable that we will one day venture into space beyond the moon not just with robots but in person.
Exploration is part of the human psyche: we are risk-takers with an insatiable curiosity. No…
