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 to head office for global astronomy development

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By: Enrico Olivier Mr. Kevin Govender, from the South African Astronomical Observatory, has been appointed to the prestigious position of Director of the International Office for Astronomy Development (OAD) with effect from March 1, 2011. The OAD, an intiative by the International Astronomical Union (IAU, which is the world body for astronomy), will coordinate a wide range of activities designed to stimulate astronomy and its development throughout the world. Mr. Govender, currently the head of the Southern African Large Telescope … Continue reading →

SOFIA’s first science flight

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Long time readers will remember the excitement about NASA’s flying observatory SOFIA, which was preparing for it’s first flight back in May.  On November 30, SOFIA made it’s first science flight, which lasted ten hours and collected data on star forming regions in Orion.  SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) is a pretty ambitious project to hoist a complete observatory up above most of the Earth’s atmospheric water vapour to peer at the cosmos in the infrared.  Water vapour does … Continue reading →

Life finds a way

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The phrase “Life as we know it” is one of those cliches that nobody notices.  It pops up in science fiction, in interviews with astrobiologists, and in serious documentaries about space.  So what is life, as we know it? We describe creatures on Earth as “Carbon based life-forms” (another sci-fi cliche), but in fact all known life is based on six elements:  Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Sulphur.  Or at least, that’s what we thought until a team of researchers funded … Continue reading →

Red Dwarf

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There are two types of Red Dwarf.  The first, and more popular, is a rusty old mining ship belonging to the Jupiter Corporation.  We know a great deal about this type of Red Dwarf, but they are exceptionally rare – there have never been more than three in existence at one time.  The Red Dwarf was immortalised in 52 episodes about the adventures of the crew members who survived a radiation leak by such varied means as being in time … Continue reading →

500

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Timeline of exoplanet discovery Less than a month ago, I attended a public lecture in which the president of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), Dr Robert Williams, reported that astronomers around the world had found over four hundred planets outside our own Solar System.  He joked that these exoplanets were being discovered so rapidly that he might have to update his presentation to four hundred and fifty planets by the time his tour ended. He must be laughing pretty hard … Continue reading →