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!

Video of the Supermoon rising

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I was recently approached by Slooh to provide footage for their Supermoon show last Sunday.  Slooh runs a network of telescopes around the world and provides their customers with remote access to them for a small fee, but also broadcasts live shows for significant astronomical events.  Now no astronomer really cares about Supermoons, because they’re not rare and not easy to tell apart from regular full moons, but it seems to get the public excited and that’s really important.  If … Continue reading →

An Asteroid Occultation

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Last Sunday, 20 July 2014, a small group of amateur astronomers sat in wait around a collection of small, jury-rigged telescopes, monitoring a faint nameless star in the constellation Virgo.  At about 7:18pm, with no drama or prelude, it winked out.  Eleven seconds later, it reappeared, shining steadily and dimly as before.  And yet only a handful of people could have seen this – observers anywhere else on Earth would have seen nothing out of the ordinary.   So what … Continue reading →

Maker Camp 2014

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Urban Astronomer is an astronomy website.  We don’t cover general science, or engineering news.  But this is cool, and valuable, and since they’ve sent a 3D printer to the ISS to allow for in situ manufacturing of spare parts, there’s a convenient space angle.  So… Do you like making things, or tinkering with them to see how they work?  Are your favourite TV characters inventors and scientists?  Do you wish you were one of those clever people who design and … Continue reading →

What lies within an asteroid

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When we think about asteroids, we imagine a large potato-shaped rock covered in craters. But a new analysis of data from Hayabusa, the plucky Japanese spacecraft that could, reveals a more interesting picture. It seems that asteroid Itokawa is not a simple space rock, but has a complex structure, with different internal regions having different densities. Hayabusa was launched by the Japanese space agency (JAXA) back in 2003.  It’s mission was to travel to a near-Earth asteroid, collect samples, and bring … Continue reading →

An evening with the Rhenosterspruit conservancy

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This past Saturday, I presented a talk on light pollution to the Rhenosterspruit Nature Conservancy. The area is of special interest to me since my home lies within its borders, and despite its rural location suffers from quite bad sky glow. Even on a good night the limiting magnitude never gets better than about 4.5, so I was hoping to reach a few people and improve matters. Unfortunately the turnout was a lot lower than I’d hoped, apparently because there … Continue reading →