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!

Supernova exposes universe’s youngest X-ray binary

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Observations by the Chandra X-ray observatory have helped scientists to find the youngest X-ray binary star ever discovered. X-ray binary stars are some of the brightest objects in the sky, when viewed in the X-ray spectrum, and are formed when one member of a binary star system dies in a violent supernova explosion. At only 4500 years old, Circinus X-1 is one of the youngest astronomical objects of any kind known to humanity.

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Starting astrophotography

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I’ve been a keen amateur astronomer for decades now, and while I’ve never taken the time to master all 88 constellations or complete a Messier marathon, I can find my way around the night sky comfortably well, and can talk visitors through a star party with the best of them. But something I’d always considered to be the province of experts was astrophotography. Back when I was learning to handle my first telescope, books spoke about the importance of grain, … Continue reading →

Hubble Finds Water on Worlds Beyond Solar System

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Two teams of scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope to study the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars have found water on five of them, proving that our Solar System is not the only place where an abundance of the life-giving liquid can be found. The exoplanets in question are WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b, and XO-1b, and are all “Hot Jupiters”, meaning that they are very large gas giants orbiting extremely close to their parent stars.  The first two planets … Continue reading →

LADEE mission studying the Moon’s atmosphere

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Most people would be surprised to learn that the Moon has an atmosphere, or that NASA scientists want to monitor how badly we’ve polluted it, but that’s exactly what the new LADEE mission is trying to find out. Launched in November last year, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is currently in orbit around the moon studying its tenuous atmosphere to understand why there is so much dust levitating above the surface, and how rocket engine emissions are … Continue reading →

Chandra finds Black Hole at the centre of the Milky Way spraying high-energy jet of particles

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Galaxies around the universe are now known to have supermassive black holes at their cores, and these SMBH’s are known for their powerful jets of high energy partcicles streaming away along their north and south poles.  Recently, the Chandra X-ray space telescope has been peering through the dense wall of gas and dust which lies between us and our own SMBH, and has finally confirmed that we too have one of these vast jets in our own Milky Way galaxy.High … Continue reading →