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!

New Zealand claims worlds largest Dark Sky Reserve

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The Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park and the Mackenzie Basin, coming in together at 4100 square kilometers, have recently been declared by the International Dark Sky Association as their fourth Dark Sky Reserve.  These reserves are areas where the natural night sky is kept clear of artificial light, allowing local wildlife to live a completely natural diurnal cycle, and visitors to see the stars in their full glory as our ancestors did.  The Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve (IDSR) is … Continue reading →

Neutrinos NOT faster than light – confirmed

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It’s official:  The OPERA experiment  did not break Special Relativity, and neutrino’s do not travel faster than light.  In one of the most attention-grabbing experiments of recent times, a beam of neutrinos generated at the Large Hadron Collider facility in Geneva was beamed downwards, through the Earth’s crust, towards the OPERA neutrino detector buried in a mountain at San Grasso, Italy.  The neutrino’s were timed very precisely and the shocking result was that they took about 50 nanoseconds less time … Continue reading →

Belt of Venus

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While the rest of the world was straining to see the Venus transit last night, I was warm and cozy in bed.  But when I did get up to rouse the kids, I saw something quite beautiful out of my son’s bedroom window:  The belt of Venus (that pink horizontal band), between the Western horizon and the setting Full Moon.  So I snapped this picture, using the my cameraphone (5MP Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro, on ‘auto’ mode, in … Continue reading →

SKA announcement: It’s a tie

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The world has been on tenterhooks all day since the board of the SKA Organisation convened in Amsterdam to make a final decision on the site location for the Square Kilometer Array radio telescope.  A tantalising “Announcement to be made at 1pm” message had my pulse racing all day, until finally at 2:40pm, the verdict was spoken: It’s a tie.  The project will be split between SA and Australia/New Zealand.  Exactly the verdict I had most feared, in fact.  Still, … Continue reading →

Science Minister on SKA announcement

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So the news is out: The Square Kilometer Array will be split between South Africa, and the Australia/New Zealand joint site, with SA getting 2/3 of the project and the antipodes getting the remainder.  But some of the most detailed information came straight from the mouth of Naledi Pandor, South African Minister for Science and Technology.  Ms Pandor had the following to say in response to the announcement from the board of the SLA organisation:   Good afternoon and welcome … Continue reading →