Category Archives: Blog

Mars vs the comet

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Late last year, word started spreading through the local astronomical community that an exciting event was coming up: An Oort cloud comet named C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) would be passing so close by Mars that there was a chance it might hit.  If it did, we on Earth would be treated to a spectacularly rare astronomical display of a comet slamming into a rocky planet.  The planetary science community were simultaneously excited about what they could learn from the resulting … Continue reading →

The beginning of a new era

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It’s been a few months since I migrated Urban Astronomer away from Google’s free hosting service and onto my own dedicated server.  I think it’s gone well, but it’s only today that I discovered the blogging feature and turned it on.  So this is my first entry. A few weeks ago, I realised that the current content model for UA just isn’t good enough.  I write a handful of info/educational articles about planets and stars and galaxies, but the bulk … Continue reading →

Observing report: NGC 6818

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Not so long ago, a discussion on the Google Plus “Amateur Astronomers” community led me to the Deep Sky Hunter Star Atlas.  It’s a stunning effort by Michael Vlasov to create a completely free and downloadable star atlas covering the entire sky down to magnitude 10.2 (and including deep sky objects down to magnitude 14.0).  It’s a small .pdf file (less than 50MB), but a serious print job: over a hundred A3 pages, double-sided.  For the sake of portability, I … Continue reading →