Author Archives: Allen Versfeld

About Allen Versfeld

Allen is an amateur astronomer, an IT professional, a podcaster, a father of five growing kids, a barely competent chess player, and the owner and publisher of the Urban Astronomer podcast and website. He has formerly served as Director of the Astrophotography and Citizen Science sections of the Astronomical Society of South Africa. You can find his personal social media feed on Mastodon!

The ice volcanoes of Titan

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Ice Volcanoes on Titan, as imaged by Cassini. Credit: NASA Sounding like an attraction on one of The Doctor‘s tours of space and time, the Ice Volcanoes of Titan have recently been discovered in radar images taken by the Cassini orbiter.  Titan is a gigantic satellite around Saturn, and is the largest moon in the Solar System.  Scientists studying Titan have been puzzled for some time by the presence of Methane in its atmosphere, because solar radiation from the Sun actively breaks it down.  They needed some … Continue reading →

First probe to reach interstellar space

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Artist’s impression of Voyager 1 Credit: NASA Two of the most famous robotic spacecraft ever launched, the Voyager probes, continue to beam back scientific data more than thirty three years after they were launched – not bad considering that they were only designed with a five year life-span.  Launched several weeks apart atop powerful Titan-Centaur rockets, they took advantage of a unique positioning of the planets to use a series of gravity assist flybys to boost them up to extremely high speeds.  … Continue reading →

That’s no asteroid!

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On the evening of 21 February 1906, A. Kopff discovered asteroid 596 Scheila. (596) Scheila, the asteroid with a tail. Image credit: Peter Lake   It was found to have a fairly typical Main Body orbit, meaning that it lives comfortably in the middle of the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.  Beyond that, it never attracted much notice, being just one amongst billions of asteroids.  This all changed over the weekend, when Steve Larson of the University of Arizona’s … Continue reading →

South African Space Agency

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In December 2008, President Kgalema Motlanthe signed into law the South African National Space Agency Act, providing for a South African space program.  Yesterday, 9 December 2010, minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandoor unveiled the new South African National Space Agency (SANSA).  South Africa already posesses a great deal of space technology, including launch facilities, which were built as part of the previous regime’s nuclear weapons program.  Part of SANSA’s mandate is to take these facilities out of mothballs … Continue reading →

First ever commercial spaceship lands on Earth

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Thanksto South African born PayPal millionaire Elon Musk, the space age can now truly begin.  His space flight company SpaceX has just put a space ship into space for two complete orbits around the Earth, and succesfully splashed it down in the Pacific ocean.  The entire flight (including launch) lasted three hours and twenty minutes, and the capsule splashed down within 800m of its landing target.  This is the first complete space mission ever by a private entity and marks … Continue reading →