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!

Higgs Boson – Found?

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So the clever folks at CERN just finished a big announcement regarding their discovery of a New Particle.  I’m not a particle physicist and I haven’t finished reading the official report, but I have been following the tweets coming out of the conference hall.  From what I gather, they’ve found a new particle, which matches the predictions made by the Standard Model for the Higgs Boson.  Now these are very serious, cautious scientists (as evidenced by their handling of the … Continue reading →

Another ocean

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New data from the Cassini spacecraft (the one responsible for almost all of the beautiful Saturn photographs on the internet) has revealed that Titan, supersized moon of Saturn has an entire subterranean (Subtitanean?) ocean lurking deep beneath its surface.  Scientists first noticed that something unusual was going on when they noticed that Titan was flexing more under tidal stresses than had previously been expected. Titan was already known to have large masses of water, and a climate very much like … Continue reading →

Satellites

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Dear Urban Astronomer How exactly do satellites work? Who invented them, and how many are up there now? I heard somewhere that there must be millions! Is this true? Yours Curious Dear Curious     All artificial satellites have one thing in common: they are in orbit around something (usually the Earth), and will in theory stay up there indefinitely all by themselves.  If by “How do they work”, you meant “How do they stay up there”, then prepare for a … Continue reading →

South Africa already benefitting from SKA

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  Those opposing the South African bid for the SKA liked to claim that an african SKA would be nothing but a development exercise, as if that were some sort of Bad Thing. Yet here we are, with the project already managing to employ 80% south africans in technical roles (scientists, engineers) – not because the poor backwards africans need a helping hand, but because we have some of the best people on Earth to get the job done.  And … Continue reading →

Slow progress

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Let me say up front:  Polishing is boring.  There’s no real sound, no tactile feedback, and the work is slow going.  Unlike grinding, you can put in many hours of work and not have any obvious result.  As a result, motivation slides and work slows.  Since my last update I’ve put in another 2 hours.  Even so, in that time I’ve learned a bit more about the process.  Firstly, to my disbelief, it seems I cut corners at the beginning … Continue reading →