Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland and Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute
As Earth orbits the sun, it continually ploughs through dust and debris left behind by passing comets and asteroids. On any night of the year, a keen-eyed observer might see five, or even ten, meteors…
Astronomers world-wide are gearing up for what NASA calls a “once in a lifetime” event: the Comet Siding Spring will swing past Mars on its maiden voyage through the solar system in the early hours next…
Clusters of galaxies have back-stories worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster: their existences are marked by violence, death and birth, arising after extragalactic pile-ups where groups of galaxies crashed…
At least twice a year, Earth comes between the sun and the moon. The result is a lunar eclipse, where we see the splendid sight of Earth’s shadow falling across the moon. Lunar eclipses are wonderful to…
Look up towards the east on Wednesday night (October 8) and a total lunar eclipse will be visible from across Australia. The moon will slowly move through Earth’s shadow, as the sun, Earth and moon fall…
Astronomers spend most of their time contemplating the universe, quite comfortable in the knowledge that we are just a speck among billions of planets, stars and galaxies. But last week, the Australian…
A piece of the galaxy formation puzzle may have fallen into place, thanks to a team of European and American astronomers peering into the depths of our early universe. According to new research published…
Look up at the night sky this week and you’ll find Mars and Saturn together in the west. Mars stands out with its reddish colouring and you might just be able to detect a faint yellow tinge to Saturn…
The future looks very bright for Australian radio astronomy but it was somewhat clouded earlier this year when CSIRO’s radio astronomy program took a dramatic hit in the Australian federal budget. CSIRO…
Over in the northern hemisphere, where summer is in full swing, it’s the time of the Perseids meteor shower. Generally it’s their best shower of the year, with 100 meteors predicted each hour over August…
The year’s biggest “supermoon” will rise on August 10. Like last time, there will be many pictures trying to showoff the “over-sized” moon. But I don’t think it deserves so much attention. At 7.09pm BST…
After a decade of travelling through space, and years before that of mission planning, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft is right on track to deliver a superb mission. Already it has…
On the night of Monday August 4, mainland Australia will see Saturn disappear behind the moon. It’s the third time this year that the moon and Saturn will perfectly line up, as viewed from our part of…
A galaxy more than 12 billion light years from Earth is heading for a “red and dead” future because it is running out of the fuel needed to make new stars. The galaxy, known as ALESS65, is an ultra-luminous…
The first images from Australia’s Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope have given scientists a sneak peek at the potential images to come from the much larger Square Kilometre Array (SKA…
Today I awoke to the news that Germany has announced its intention to withdraw from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. The SKA is an ambitious project that plans to build a radio telescope with…
It’s almost three months since a team of scientists announced it had detected polarised light from the afterglow of the Big Bang. But questions are still being asked about whether cosmic dust may have…
A titanic eruption in our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, has sent shockwaves through the astronomical community here on Earth. NASA’s Swift satellite detected a flood of gamma rays at 21:15 UTC yesterday…
Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland and Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute
Across North America, Europe and Japan, skywatchers will be out in force this weekend with high hopes of catching a never-before-seen meteor shower. Predicted to peak this Saturday, May 24, the shower…