We have known for more than a century that solar activity shows a pronounced cyclic variation with an 11-year period. About every 11 years there is a maximum in activity and sunspots become very prominent and very common. Back in my younger days, I was a keen solar observer during one particular holiday around the [...]
JPL has produced a further update for the orbit of the Tesla, although the rate of arrival of new observations has slowed. With the Tesla now below magnitude 20 and, with the Moon close to full, it is unlikely that there will be a new orbit update for at least another week or ten days. [...]
Since my original posting on Starman, there have been so many observations made of it as it recedes, mainly by amateur astronomers, that JPL has produced multiple updates for the orbit of the Tesla. The latest orbit is sufficiently good that JPL has also calculated future encounters with the Earth, the Moon and Mars. Although [...]
The only way to avoid knowing that, this week, a bright red, electric sports card with a spacesuit clad dummy at the wheel was launched into interplanetary space was to have become a hermit. The launch was deeply impressive and it seemed only right that the most powerful American rocket since the Saturn V should [...]
One of the greatest features of a Herschel mission lunch in the canteen – although most of the Herschel veterans around the table have now moved on to other missions – is the remarkable conversations. A topic comes up and a bunch of scientists and engineers start ruminating on it. These days the topic is [...]
