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!

Geomagnetic storm: Incoming!

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Yesterday afternoon, at 17h53 UTC, a vast sunspot erupted in an X-class flare, just as it directly facing Earth.  A powerful pulse of ultraviolet radiation lit up our upper atmosphere, briefly ionising it and disturbing the propogation of long-range radio transmissions.  The flare also threw off a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) – a cloud of superheated plasma ejected from the outer layers of the Sun, which is now racing through space towards us.  It is expected to reach us sometime … Continue reading →

New discovery: Pluto’s fifth moon

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A team of astronomers led by Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute have used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to find a tiny, previously undiscovered moon orbiting around Pluto.  This discovery of the fifth moon comes a little more than a year after the fourth moon was discovered.  Both these moons are so new that they have yet to be named and are simply referred to as P4 and P5. P5 is incredibly small, with a diameter of between 10 … Continue reading →

Astronomy within Reach – by Neville Young

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  South African amateur astronomer Neville Young recently mailed me to let me know about his new book, Astronomy within Reach.  Neville has been a member of the Pretoria centre of the Astronomical Society of South Africa for over 25 years, and has always loved sharing his knowledge of the stars with the general public at open viewing evenings.  Over the years he’s developed a number of teaching aids to help with his explanations – everything from constellation jigsaw puzzles … Continue reading →

Scopex in two weeks

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ScopeX, the annual South African ATM expo, happens this year on Saturday 21 July.  Urban Astronomer just received this appeal from the organisers: The 12th annual ScopeX event on July 21st is almost upon us! What makes these events successful is your engagement. We hope you will visit and encourage others to do so too. How you can help Visit www.scopex.co.za to see the line-up this year; you will note an interesting new direction regarding the talks. Download the flyers … Continue reading →

South African astronomy commemorated in stamps

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Surprisingly few people know about South Africa’s rich astronomy heritage, yet astronomers from around the world have been coming here to build observatories and study the skies for hundreds of years.  The SKA is merely the latest such project.  In recognition of this fact, the South African Post Office has commissioned local artist Marcus Neustetter to design a series of stamps highlighting South Africa’s historical involvement in world astronomy.  Marcus is a keen amateur astronomer who traces his own interest … Continue reading →