Category Archives: News and Updates

News about Astronomy and Space Science. Find every news item and update here, in blog format. You can get these updates sent straight to your mailbox by subscribing here, or you can subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking the link.

Lessons learned trying to live-stream an eclipse

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Some months back, the Astronomical Society of South Africa (ASSA) decided use the upcoming partial annular solar eclipse to promote astronomy in South Africa, and perhaps drum up a few new members for ASSA. Now ASSA has decades of experience with public outreach, but they wanted to try something new: video.  My brief, as a committee volunteer, was to help them to live-stream an eclipse.  Overall, we felt we’d succeeded in the end, but there were definitely some lessons worth learning. … Continue reading →

Carnival of Space #485

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Another week, another Carnival of Space.  It’s an interesting time for Urban Astronomer, what with weather interfering with our plans at helping out with an international amateur collaboration to measure the distances to asteroids and the announcement date for our next big secret project looming (it’s a podcast. Launching next year, in February. Don’t tell anybody! Shh!).  We’re so busy, but not producing any visible results.  But soon the new year will roll around, the weather will change, our funding situation … Continue reading →

Carnival of Space #479

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Well it’s been an amazing week for amateur astronomers here in South Africa.  After weeks of frantic last-minute preparations, the annual ScopeX telescope and astronomy expo ran without a hitch on Saturday, and I think it was a huge success.  We had a good turnout from the Amateur Telescope Making community, the astrophotography competition was well supported, and our special guests were a real hit with their talks in the auditorium.  Francis O’Reilly of the famous Stellafane telescope building club, flew … Continue reading →

Review: Cosmic Watch

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Every now and then, we get asked to review astronomy tools.  This time it’s a nifty app called Cosmic Watch, available on both Android and iOS devices.  It was written by a team of Swiss developers, and at its core is simply an astronomical clock.  But as you explore the beautiful interface, and work through its many options, it becomes clear that the app offers so much more. Features So what exactly is an ‘astronomical clock’? According to the Cosmic … Continue reading →

Carnival of Space #474

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Welcome back to another Carnival of Space, Urban Astronomer style.  The week felt quiet, after the excitement of running a live video stream of our partial view of the annular solar eclipse of the Sun, so it was a big surprise to find so many space science and astronomy writers sending in their work for this week’s edition of the carnival. So without any further prevaricating around the bush, let’s get started. Kicking off the Carnival of Space, our first … Continue reading →