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.

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 →

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 →

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 →

X-37B spaceplane completes second mission

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The X-37B shortly after completing its 1st missionPhoto credit: Boeing photo In 2010, as the Space Shuttle program was winding down, the secretive Other spaceplane was preparing for its first ever test mission.  Shortly after it landed, it was launched on its second mission, this one lasting 469 days — more than a year.  It returned to Earth a few days ago, to much excitement and speculation as to what exactly it was doing up there.  Small enough to fit … Continue reading →