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 secret X-37B military spacecraft, launched one month ago, has been found by amateur satellite watchers. The X-37B is much smaller than the Space Shuttle yet is able to fly extended missions of up to nine months and can move between orbits with relative ease. There has been a great deal of speculation as to the purpose of the X-37B, but all the US Air Force will say is that it does not have direct offensive capabilities. However, it could … Continue reading →
On 22 April Voyager 2 went wrong. Since their launch in 1977, the Voyager twins have provided a non-stop 24/7 stream of data telemetry to the mission scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But on the day of the fault, that stream of information suddenly became scrambled and unreadable. Quick diagnostics showed that the probe was still working as designed, was still receiving and obeying instructions and still collecting data and transmitting it to Earth. It was only one specific … Continue reading →
That may sound like a line from Flash Gordon or Dr Who, but it’s actually an observation made by Damien Hutsemekers and his team at the University of Liège, Belgium, back in 2005. Quasars are the most distant objects we can see, and therefore the brightest most energetic objects in the universe. Most significant (where the observation is concerned) is how extremely far they are from each other. Being nothing more than very young and active galaxies, there should be … Continue reading →
Want to help professional astronomers get some serious work done? Have a few spare minutes? Log on to Moon Zoo and start counting craters! Moon Zoo is the newest Zooniverse project, and is a way for astronomers to cope with the sheer volume of lunar data returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which is photographing and mapping the entire surface of the moon in incredible detail. As a volunteer, you are presented with images of tiny areas of the … Continue reading →
Everybody over a certain age remembers Steve Austin, the test pilot who survived a terrific crash and had to be reassembled with bionic components, from the TV Show The 6 Million Dollar Man, but not many realise that the crash shown in the opening sequence was not a special effect. On 10 May 1967, Bruce Peterson took the experimental M2-F2 wingless aircraft on its 16th test flight and crashed horribly. He survived thanks to the extensive surgery he received, but … Continue reading →
