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A Daily Dose of Zooniverse

[](http://daily.zooniverse.org) 'Something awesome from the Zooniverse every day' was the tagline that we came up with, almost a year ago, for a new Zooniverse…

The Zooniverse in 3mins 21s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DppJ-Sexmdg This was recorded at the Citizen Cyberscience Summit in London in February - it's me summarising the Zooniverse for…

Stargazing Oxford is Today!

Join us at the Physics Department on Keble Road, near St. Giles in Oxford. From 2-10pm we’ll be manning stands, doing craft activities and answering questions.…

Planet Four

Tonight is the start of the 2013 round of the wonderful BBC Stargazing Live. three nights of primetime astronomy programmes, hosted live from the iconic…

On Top of the World

I’m currently on a trip around the Northern part of Norway to try and see the Northern Lights. This arctic cruise, organised by the Oxford Alumni office, sees…

Science in Real Time

This past week has been busy thanks to some great media coverage for the Zooniverse, both online, on TV and at the big astronomy meeting in the USA last week…

Timeline

You can add all sorts of bizarre and specific ‘life events’ to Facebook with the new Timeline feature. These include ‘piercing’, ‘new vehicle’, ‘change of…

PaperRater.org

The tagline for PaperRater is ‘open review, collaborative reading of scientific papers’. This seems like a good idea, but requires more people to use it more…

Ancient History

Its almost a year since we moved to Witney, a few miles West of Oxford. Witney is a typical, Cotswold town in many ways, but that description doesn’t really do…

Galaxy Zoo Finds the Milky Way's Twin

A-Level student Tim Buckman from Portsmouth Grammer School Has used Galaxy Zoo to find our own galaxy’s twin (see image below). He spent 6 weeks working with…

Tal's Good Feet: Prognosis

If you’ve been following the progress of my nephew Tal, there was big news from Saint Louis yesterday! Tal (Taliesin) has been in the US for almost a month,…

.Astronomy PenCasting Gallery

Pencasts are interactive Flash videos of handwritten notes and audio captured by the Pulse Livescribe smartpen. Jose Enrique Ruiz created this lovely gallery…

ChromoTone

ChromoTone is a wonderful way to explore the meaning of astronomy in wavelengths beyond the optical. Rather than apply colours to the different wavelengths of…

SCUBA-2 observes…… the Moon

[ ](http://scuba2.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/moon850all.png) The Moon in the submillimetre The last weekend of March was a cloudy and wet(†) night and all…

Solar System Walking Tour of Oxford

](http://www.talsgoodfeet.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/solarsystemwalk.jpg) I’m organising a walking tour of Oxford with a difference. I want to walk the…

I Am One (Saturnian) Year Old Today

Today, March 16th 2011, is my first Saturnian birthday. I shall go and have a low-density birthday cake. This great website, from the Exploratorium, lets you…

Astronomy Evening for Tal's Good Feet

I have blogged before about the fundraising effort to get my nephew, Taliesin, a life-changing operation for cerebral palsy. you can read all about Tal’s Good…

ceres

[](https://orbitingfrog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/d6fee-plutofromceres.jpg) link ceres is an object in our solar system that lives in the…

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There are several women astronauts. The earliest footprints — 3.6 million years old — made by a member of the human family have been found in a volcanic ash…

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Animation of three wavelengths of the Sun from Pete Lawrence (@AvertedVision, via @willgater). It may take a moment to load but once it does, you can some…

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Discovery, over southern Morocco during the ISS fly around before departure (by Paolo Nespoli)

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Like most bureaucracies [the Research Excellence Framework] has lost sight of its original purpose and has now become something that exists purely for its…

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Spring must be on its way, Leo is riding high. I took this snap just a few minutes ago. You can also tell Spring is coming because it’s no longer fracking…

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The Moon and Jupiter at the end of my street.

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Martin Lewis photographs an astronaut in orbit from his back garden! His ISS photo shows the shape of the Space Shuttle Discovery. At the end of a robotic arm,…

The evolution of candy

I love creative science analogies, which is why I’m digging this story about a lecture given by Bob Paul, a biology professor at St. Mary’s College of…

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A video of ESA’s Planck spacecraft, as seen from Earth. As part of the Space Situational Awareness programme, ESA’s Tenerife observatory often searches for…

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Paleaku Peace Gardens Sanctuary in Kona, Hawaii, USA. A 30m map of the Milky Way Galaxy. Many bright, nearby stars are depicted on leaves surrounding the…

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itsfullofstars: > Two Planets Discovered Sharing the Same Orbit > > In a cosmic first, the Kepler telescope has discovered two planets sharing the same orbit.…

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The Moon, Venus and Jupiter from last year. A long exposure photo gone wrong.

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Amazing images of the Milky Way captured by amateur astronomer on the hills of Snowdonia

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Happy St. David’s day. A few years ago I ran a first year lab session at Cardiff on St. David’s day. I decided to take in some daffodils for a bit of…

3D printing with mashed potatatoes

The people at Bits From Bytes, who sell 3D printer kits, fed some mashed potatoes to a RapMan printer and used it to print some quite credible prototype 3D…

LCOGT's Virtual Sky

Stuart Lowe (LCOGT, Astronomy Blog) has created a wonderfully simple in-browser planetarium called Virtual Sky, using javascript and the HTML5 canvas element.…

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Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on…

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Thierry Legault does it again! Utterly incredible movie of the Space Shuttle Discovery as it approaches the International Space Station at 17,000mph. This…

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Will Gater’s montage showing the ISS reflecting the changing colours of sunset. Wonderful!

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I can now display a FITS file in a web page. The code is available if you want to have a play with it. It is a bit slow but that is mostly due to the time it…

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Zeta Oph: Runaway Star (APOD) there was recently some talk about spotting runaway stars in the Milky Way Project. Although that turned out not to be the case,…

ADS Labs

This is a great, new beta tool for exploring the ADS database and finding papers about topics, people or themes. ADS Labs

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Amazing sunset installation at Tate Modern. Photo taken by Vicki on a trip to London in 2003.

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As Discovery heads into orbit for its final mission, take a look at what is inside a Space Shuttle (from Space.com)

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[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/19764869 w=500&h=281] My nephew, Taliesin is 3 years old and lives near Cardiff in the UK. He suffers from Cerebral Palsy. We are…

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An amazing image I found on the Milky Way Project. Despite running the project, I still find amazing things there all the time.

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APOD: 2011 February 23 - The Solar System from MESSENGER

Milky Way Project Data Reduction

\Cross-posted from [the Milky Way Project blog] I’ve spent much of the past two weeks messing about with different ways to reduce down over 200,000 bubbles…

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photosgo: > Radiolab: Lucy > > > Chimps. Bonobos. Humans. We’re all great apes. This hour we take a look at what happens when we all try to live together. Is…

Blog Migration Complete

I am trying something new and have moved the blog from Wordpress to Tumblr. This has been done primarily to enable easier, faster posting by me. There will no…

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I got this great mug for Christmas showing the Drake Equation. Have been thinking about this recently because of the recent Kepler findings and related…

I'm a Scientist... Get Me Out of Here

I’m taking part in the 2011 I’m a Scientist… Get Me Out of Here competition. For two weeks in March, school kids will be asking me questions and I’ll be doing…

Sarah's Research Blogging Collection

Sarah Kendrew has some great stuff in her weekly Research Blogging roundup. The Anti-laser, Tubing Londoners, Standard Candles that Flicker, and the Giant Bear…

When will the world end?

Hi there. First question - well done :) I actually did a blog post a while back about Ways to End the World. It outlines some interesting ways to end…

#AAS217 Monday Tweetup

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/5340458067512cdbd8d7b.jpg) Monday (used to be Tuesday but it changed)…

British Isles at Night

Wow! Another astonishing image from the ISS - this time we get to see the British Isles (The UK, Ireland and Channel Islands) at night.…

Partial Solar Eclipse

This morning (UK time) there was a partial eclipse of the Sun visible from many parts of the Earth. From the UK, the eclipse was already underway by the time…

Danger: Risk of Death

A recent episode of the excellent More or Less podcast featured a discussion of the ‘micromort’, a unit expressing a one-in-a-million chance of dying. You can…

Graphene Nobel for Manchester

Andre Geim, an Ig Nobel laureate and physicist working at the University of Manchester has been jointly awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics. He is joined…

Io in True Colour

Yesterdays APOD was a beautiful image of Io as the human eye would see it. We are so used to seeing false-colour images from spacecraft that it is easy to…

Massive Solar Storm Heading for Earth

On Sunday, a giant burst of plasma was ejected from the Sun and is heading right for us. The ejected material is expected to collide with the Earth’s…

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 = 100

In the run up to my viva last week I became obsessed with a game I played a few years ago whilst at a summer school in Switzerland. Viva revision is somewhat…

Orion and Perseus Seen by Planck

New images from Planck, ESA’s cosmological space observatory, show star formation in Orion and Perseus. These lovely images show cold prestellar cores about to…

Galaxy Zoo: Hubble

The Galaxy Zoo project has evolved once again. Galaxy Zoo: Hubble is the new incarnation of the Zooniverse’s fantastic citizen science project. The latest…

The Hidden Universe at TEDxCardiff

On Wednesday I had the great pleasure of speaking at TEDx in Cardiff. I chose to speak about multiwavelength astronomy - why it is useful and what it means.…

Mercury Setting

Mercury, the innermost planet, is currently making one of its elusive appearances in the night sky. Being so close to the Sun, and fairly small, Mercury is…

Newton and the Imaginary Colour

I was thinking about colours today - specifically which colours correspond to which wavelengths. The results are a bit weird: - Red: 750 - 620 nm - Orange:…

With All the Energy of a Mosquito

Whilst reading about today’s Large Hadron Collider beam smash on the BBC News website, I spotted an odd statement about the 7 TeV (1,000,000,000,000…

UKSA

The UK Space Agency (UKSA) launched today in Swindon. The new body, which replaces the British National Space Centre (BNSC), is being created to bolster the…

Twitpics from Space

Whilst my thesis is being bound, I thought I’d share one of my current favourite twitter feeds with you: @Astro\Soichi. Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi is…

Trapped in the Thesiverse

In March I will begin working at Oxford University, as a postdoctoral researcher in citizen science. The ‘post’-doctoral part of that title means that I must…

Pluto Images Show Changing Surface

New Hubble images of Pluto have revealed that the surface of the dwarf planet changed between 2000 and 2002. Pluto has become significantly redder, and the…

The Polaris Flare

In our star formation group meeting this afternoon, one object that came up was the Polaris Flare. Up until now I’ve only heard of this object in passing, but…

Orbiting Frog Shop

The Orbiting Frog Shop is back online, selling my own designs on t-shirts and other products. I used to have a shop associated with this blog, run through…

#uksnow from Space

Wow! I saw this amazing image thanks to Stuart retweeting a @NASA posting. It shows the UK covered in snow, from the NASA Earth Observatory program website and…

My Red Blue Moon

A really quick to show my snaps of yesterday’s partial lunar eclipse, on a blue moon. You can see the little bite taken out of the Moon on the lower-right,…

Blue Moon Eclipse

So here’s something that totally passed me by: there is a partial lunar eclipse tonight! Thanks to Astropixie and Astronomy Blog for pointing it out - I would…

Happy 2010

Well I have little to say right now as I am currently working hard (ahem!) writing my thesis. I have four chapters to complete in draft by January 11th.…

Rosette Nebula and HOBYS

Last week there was a meeting in Madrid showcasing the first results from ESA’s new space-borne infrared observatory Herschel. All the talks from the workshop…

The Winter Solstice

In looking for a nice link to send someone explaining the concept of the Solstice, I came across this excellent series of images from the Wikipedia article on…

What was the Star of Bethlehem?

Sigh. So it’s that time of time year - “what was the Star of Bethlehem?”. This is a question a lot of astronomers will be innocently asked by all sorts of…

Herschel Stares into Aquila

Well Herschel has done it again - releasing an incredible image filled with beauty and science. This time it shows a distant, dark cloud located a thousand…

Merry Fucking Christmas

Sorry about the blog post title - it’s one my favourite South Park Christmas songs and it is in my head at the moment. It is also fairly apt for tomorrow’s…

Teleporting Santa

Each year in the department we have a Christmas lecture followed by a postgraduate competition where the PhD students have five minutes to demonstrate…

Chromoscope

Stuart Lowe, of Jodrell Bank, along with myself and Chris North from Cardiff University are proud to release Chromoscope: a multiwavelength sky explorer.…

.Astronomy 2009

Well I can hardly believe it but the second .Astronomy conference is nearly here. Next week (Monday to Friday) 50 astronomers gather in…

If the Earth Had Rings

Someone told me about this video and I tweeted it. Many retweets later I thought I would share it on the blog too. What if the Earth had rings? This video…

Seeing Infrared

I’ve recently become obsessed with thinking about the world in other (non-optical) wavelengths. I work with data from submillimetre detectors (approximately…

.Astronomy CAS Talk

Last week I gave a talk to the Cardiff Astronomical Society, I thought I’d share it for them and anyone else that might be interested. The talk overviewed some…

The Gould Belt

The Gould Belt is a vast ring of active stellar nurseries, young stars and molecuar clouds encircling our Solar System. I am part of the JCMT Gould Belt Survey…

Carnival of Space 125

I am pleased to be hosting this week’s quasquicentennial Carnival of Space -  a collection of the best space-related blog posts from the past week. Next Big…

One Billion Dollars

With the recent furore over LCROSS, the current STFC funding debacle and much recent discussion of manned spaceflight, I was reminded of this wonderful image…

Max Alexander Portraits

Just a short post to draw your attention to this really cool collection of portraits by photographer Max Alexander. A wide range of people - all astronomers -…

Bombing the Moon

On Friday, NASA’s LCROSS Moon mission ended with the probe taking a nose dive onto the Lunar surface. This was all planned and was a great way to see what lay…

Asteroid 16 Psyche

Whilst away in France, I had very dark skies almost every night. As usual I set myself a little goal whilst I was away, and this year it was to try to observe…

LookUP

Stuart Lowe (Astronomy Blog, The Jodcast) started something a little while ago called LookUP. This simple search box allows you to enter the name of almost any…

Astronomy du Jour

Ah France! I am once again enjoying a timeout in Provence, where I have dark, clear skies most nights, a large supply of good wine and too much cheese. As…

10 Step Guide to the IAU Program Book

1) Open book to summary page. 2) Realise this isn’t the summary. Repeat step 1. 3) Nearly there, try again. It’s at the back. 4) Find the session you’re…

IAU General Assembly Update

[](http://oldblog.orbitingfrog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/photo5.jpg)Well I hope you are following Twitter! WiFi at the conference is really poor…

IAU Inaugural Ceremony

Sitting waiting for the opening ceremony to begin. The President is here, so are the governor and the mayor. They are showing images of dwarf planets on the…

Preciso Pensar

So I am currently lying here at 6:30am thinking about the day ahead. I have been in Rio for less than 12 hours and already I don’t know what to make of it.…

A List of IAU Bloggers and Twitterers

[](http://oldblog.orbitingfrog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/image.png)I can’t find a decent list of blogs and Twitterers covering the IAU General…

Southern Stars

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/photo3.jpg)Partly to test out the use of email posting to this blog -…

The International Astronomical Union

On Monday I will be setting off for Rio de Janeiro for the 2009 International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly (GA). This is a massive…

Tweprints Update

Back in April I launched a new project called arXiv on Twitter, or just ‘Tweprints’. This website collects the tweets that mention papers from the arXiv…

.Astronomy 2009 Poster

The posters for the 2009 .Astronomy Conference are being delivered to several places around the world and should be appearing in a department near you soon. If…

Open Science

Yesterday I gave the final departmental astrolunch of the semester, which reviewed Michael Neilsen’s excellent Physics World article ‘Doing Science in the…

How I Got Into Astronomy

\UPDATE: Submit an audio version of your story for a podcast. See [this blog post ] How did I get into astronomy? I was born in 1981 so my formative years…

Bienvenue OverTwitter

I have been working on a way to internationalize (is that a word?) my OverTwitter feeds, which predict visible passes of satellites as well as Iridium flares.…

Eyes on the Skies

I have just found myself in possession of a DVD called Eyes on the Skies. I watched a few minutes of it just now and it looks very interesting. It seems that…

Networking Meteors

I don’t normally talk about the daily APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) images from NASA becasue they are so popular and well annotated. Today’s has really…

Hubble Brewing

Herschel and Planck will be occupying our attention late next week, but before then, Hubble once again takes centre stage. Servicing mission 4 (SM4) will…

Herschel and Planck Ready

Herschel and Planck have a launch window confirmed: May 14th (shortly after lunchtime here in the UK). They will be taken up on board an Ariane 5 from ESA’s…

Close Encounters

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the BBC in Birmingham to help edit The Sky at Night as an astronomy researcher. The episode was about near-Earth…

arXiv on Twitter

I like arXiv and I like Twitter, so I decided to combine to two. arXiv on Twitter is a weekend project that captures mentions of arXiv papers on Twitter and…

An Extra Positron Problem

Astrolunch is a weekly talk here at the Department of Physics and Astronomy where speakers give talks on a topic outside of their usual expertise. This week’s…

Make Your Own Moonwatch

[](http://moonwatch.50webs.com) Next week is Moonwatch week here in the UK (28th of March to 5th of April). This is frankly our way of making up time on the…

Galaxy Zoo 2

Finally! Today Galaxy Zoo 2 launched (after a startled Twitter countdown) and you will hopefully hear more about it either online or in the media during the…

Over Twitter Update

I have updated and expanded the collection of ISS- and Hubble-spotting Twitter feeds. There are now Twitter feeds for Aix, Amsterdam, Athens, Auckland,…

The 21 Signs of the Zodiac

A Cardiff University astrophysicist was recently on our local news station and was mortifyingly introduced as an astrologer. It got me thinking about astrology…

Science or Fiction?

Science or Fiction is a podcast in which James Smythe, an author and sci-fi fan based in Cardiff, discusses some of his favourite science fiction movies and TV…

BLAST on the BBC

Tonight (Wednesday January 7th) at 10.00pm you can catch a documentary about BLAST on BBC Four. The Balloon-Borne Large Aperture Submilimetre Telescope has an…

Detox Supernova in 3D (Part 2)

In my last post I said that Dr. Haley Gomez, a researcher at Cardiff University, had been very busy recently. Not only has she been giving interviews about the…

Detox Supernova in 3D (Part 1)

Cardiff University’s Dr. Haley Gomez has been a busy girl! You may have seen this item today: a 3D supernova remnant modelled by a team of astronomers,…

2009 Kicks Off

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/365days.png) This year is the International Year of Astronomy. January…

Triple Conjunction

Curiously, I was completely ignorant about yesterday’s triple conjunction until a Tweet from Space\Jockey inadvertently alerted me to the event. I started…

Exoplanets Revealed

A lot of people are already blogging this but here we have it: an optical image of a planet orbiting around another star. The star is Fomalhaut and the planet…

I Am Really Bored Today

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/m31.jpg) Sometimes the thrill of uncovering the true nature of the…

Cardiff's New Telescope Opens

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/newtelescopefixed.jpg) The Cardiff HAlf metre Newise Telescope (CHaNT)…

Spacebuzz

Stuart has been busy since the .Astronomy Conference and has come up with a rather nifty tool called Spacebuzz. This one-page website uses blog tags to compile…

365 Days of Astronomy

It’ll be upon us before we know it: 2009 is less than three months away! It will be the International Year of Astronomy and as part of the festivities, a new…

Height (from xkcd)

[ ](http://xkcd.com/) Just wanted to point out this wonderful xkcd comic. I like that it ends (or starts, if you like) with ‘folks’. This is why I love xkcd.…

Journey to the Surface of the Earth

The Jules Verne ATV, which was launched earlier this year by ESA to aid in deliveries to the ISS, will burn up today in a controlled fireball re-entry.…

Busy Busy Busy

It has been a very busy Summer for me, and now it looks to be a very busy Autumn. This week I will be running the .Astronomy Conference, a meeting about…

Get an Automatic APOD Desktop

This one is Mac OS X only. (Funny how I know a lot more astronomers with Macs than any other group of people). I was tinkering about earlier and created this…

Photo Messier Marathon 2008

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/flintstonestargazer/2747765867/ "photo sharing") Photo Messier Marathon 2008 - COMPLETE   Originally uploaded by…

Simpson et al. 2008

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/rhooph.jpg) Finally my paper studying the Ophiuchus star-forming region…

Observing Pluto

Last night I fulfilled a longstanding ambition: I saw Pluto. The dwarf planet is extremely hard to see. You need exceptionally dark skies, a decent telescope…

Help Me Picture the Stars

Those that follow me on Twitter will know that I have been taking pictures of the stars in the past couple of dayse. I’m located right down in the south of…

Life from Venus Blown to Earth

“Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe and Dr Janaki Wickramasinghe claim Venus’s clouds contain chemicals that are consistent with the presence of micro organisms.”…

Sunshine on a Rainy Day

Ah here I am in ever-so sunny Aix in the south of France. I’m blogging from my iPhone right now because I’m by the pool and too comfy to go and find my laptop.…

Astronomy iPhone App in Store

Was just looking through the App Store on iTunes and found an astronomy application for the iPhone/iPod Touch called Starmap [

Can Light Orbit a Black Hole?

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/fallingintoablackhole.jpg) Black holes are very interesting things,…

Tonight: A Line of Planets

](http://blogs.discovery.com/whatsupastronomy/2008/07/a-line-of-plane.html)[ [](http://blogs.discovery.com/whatsupastronomy/2008/07/a-line-of-plane.html)…

Police say UFO was Just the Moon

](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7489457.stm)[[](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7489457.stm) [](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7489457.stm) I love that…

UK Physics Names Funding Drop Outs

](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7487861.stm)[ [](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7487861.stm) [](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7487861.stm)…

What Do You Think?

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/red-eyed-tree-frog.jpg) Orbiting Frog has been growing and changing for…

Carnival of Space 61

Mang is hosting his first Carnival of Space this week. I’d like to highlight the 10 Reasons Why China is Good for Space post from 21st Century Waves and an…

New Kids on the Blog

I was recently made aware (thanks to an email about a post on the .Astronomy Conference website) of some new astronomy blogs that have popped up over at the…

Sarkozy: Spaceman

[](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7482232.stm) [](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7482232.stm) ](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7482232.stm)…

SCUBA-2 vs Plutonium

SCUBA-2, the next generation submillimetre camera on the JCMT, has suffered another set back. After being installed at the site in April (photos) the team have…

The Tunguska Event

](http://www.planetary.org/image/DDTNGSKA.jpg)[[](http://www.planetary.org/image/DDTNGSKA.jpg) [](http://www.planetary.org/image/DDTNGSKA.jpg)…

UK Physics Teacher Shortage

](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7478302.stm)[ [](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7478302.stm) ](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7478302.stm)…

Carnival of Space 60

It doesn’t seem that long ago I hosted my first Carnival and that was number 40. Now the Carnival gets a bus pass as it turns 60. Hosted by Slacker Astronomy,…

Earth and Friends in Multiple Wavelengths

REPOST: This was originally written in 2007 but is being reposted because of some discussion it generate elsewhere. There is a lot more to the universe than…

Black Hole Hunter

](http://www.blackholehunter.org/)[[](http://www.blackholehunter.org/) [](http://www.blackholehunter.org/) ](http://www.blackholehunter.org/)  Black Hole…

The Font Sizes of the Planets

Yesterday I was playing with Wordle and decided to create this image (click to enlarge) which shows all the main bodies of the Solar System - and then some.…

Home Made Plasma, Country Wife

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tat8BH6kMcE 351 291] Here is a short science experiment at home. They guy seems to be showing us how to create a…

Martian Skies

](http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/martianskies.html)[[](http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/martianskies.html)…

Solar Eclipse 2008

[](http://www.astropix.com/HTML/SHOWCASE/TOTAL1.HTM) August 1st 2008 will see a solar eclipse visible across much of Asia, Europe, the Middle East and some…

Wordle

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/rhoophwordle.png) Thanks to JPSmythe I have been playing with Wordle, a…

Photo of a Light Wave

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/pulse.jpg) This amazing image was taken using an extremely fast,…

Carnival of Space 59

This week’s Carnival is up so get over there and get reading! Also found this image via the Carnival which I rather liked.

Mars Ice Sublimates

[](http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/dodo020024.gif) [](http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/dodo020024.gif)…

Jodrell Bank Future Improving

The future of eMerlin, a crucial upgrade to the world-famous Jodrell Bank observatory, in Cheshire, is starting to look brighter. BBC NEWS | Science/Nature |…

A Universe Made of Maths

According to Dr. Tegmark, “there is only mathematics; that is all that exists.” In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis, he updates quantum physics…

Astronomy and Spuds: Spudstonomy

[ ](http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000822.shtml)Astronomy and agriculture - yet more ways astronomy has advanced mankind without much notice. How humble…

Listen to Gravity

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/soundwave.jpg) I found out today that I have annoyed some of my…

The Science of Mentos and Diet Coke

[ ](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5069276) The startling reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos sweets, made famous in thousands of YouTube videos,…

Your Life and the Age of the Universe

A peculiar little way of visualising your own brief existence with that of the whole universe: in pixels. Illustrates the point nicely. read more | digg…

Carnival of Space 58

The 58th Carnival is up and it is being hosted by Universe Today, who of course operate and run the Carnival on behalf of the community. It’s a good…

Where are the Sunspots?

](http://www.universetoday.com/2008/06/12/where-are-the-sunspots-are-we-in-for-a-quiet-solar-cycle/)[[](http://www.universetoday.com/2008/06/12/where-are-the-su…

Astronaut At Work

](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/imagefeature1104.html)[ [](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/imagefeature1104.html)…

Phil Plait is Pareidolia

](http://www.worth1000.com/emailthis.asp?entry=459562)[[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/philinstone.jpg)…

Phoenix Descends

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuYMOWyawe8 351 291] YouTube - Phoenix Descends - a video from Bad Astronomy which I rather enjoyed.

xkcd

](http://www.xkcd.com/435/)[ [](http://www.xkcd.com/435/) ](http://www.xkcd.com/435/)  I rather like this one! [xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math,…

A 6,000 Mile Telescope

May 22 marked a live demo of the first four-continent, Very Long Baseline Interferometry observations. “VLBI uses multiple radio telescopes to simultaneously…

A Visit to the Sun

Cool, check out Solar Probe Plus. A (really) heat resistant craft that could dive into the outer layers of the Sun’s atmosphere. Its very sci-fi - as all the…

GLAST Launched Today

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/glast.jpg) GLAST has now launched after a few delays in the last couple…

Improbable Research

I have been featured by Improbable Research for my Chinese Satellite Debris tracking Google Earth gizmo. I don’t seem to be able to leave a comment on the…

IYP2008

Just a nice little post from Pamela Gay about how IYA might sound to someone who really cares about, well potatoes perhaps. Star Stryder - 2008 The Year of the…

Plutoids

Stuart has the lowdown on the agreed name for a certain type of object that orbits beyond the distance of Neptune. Formerly an icy dwarf planet-type thing, now…

50 Breathtaking Aerial Photos

Images of the Earth from space are always beautiful. Some of these are not quite in that category but on the whole this collection of stunning images is. This…

Binocular Astronomy

Nice short post over at the 433rd about how sometimes a telescope isn’t what you need: a great pair of binoculars will do. Mang’s Bat Page: Binocular Astronomy

Phoenix Has Trouble with its Oven Door

The first sample of Martian dirt is not yet in the testing oven on Phoenix. The reason is unclear, but the lander will today try to shake loose the soil and…

LFI and HFI Walk the Planck

What is this jibberish I’m spouting now? Well LFI and HFI are two instruments flying on ESA’s new Planck spacecraft, which will be launching in a few months…

Throw Me a Link

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/technoratifrog.png) For a while now, I have been watching my Technorati…

UNAWE in Kenya

I’ve been learning about UNAWE (Universe Awareness for young Children) recently. You should too. Here’s a great little film they have put online, from Kenya.…

Astronomy Light Bulb Jokes

We were just chatting in coffee and the topic of ‘light bulb’ jokes came up (along with some serious dubious jokes involving snowmen). Here are some astronomy…

Carnival of Space 57

Out of the Cradle hosts this week’s Carnival of Space (the 57th carnival so far). Go and take a look, browse, leave some comments and maybe even find some new…

Moon Darbar

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/murali-art/2507545884/ "photo sharing") [Moon Darbar   Originally uploaded by Light and Life. Flickr Find 5 of 5. I thought it…

On Dark Energy and Car Keys

A nice piece from the New York Times about dark energy, what it is and why its interesting. Dark Energy is a bit like big money being spent on studying gravity…

Spitzer's Galaxy

I briefly blogged yesterday about the massive image of our own galaxy, the milky way, that has been released by the people using the infrared Spitzer Space…

UK Maths Exams 'Have Become Easier'

Follow the link below to a PDF file showing higher-tier maths examination questions across many years ranging from 1951 to 2006. Surely this is evidence enough…

APOD: Chasing the ISS

The International Space Station (ISS) races across the sky, seen in two overlayed long exposure images, followed by the space shuttle. STS-124 is on its way to…

Cocoon

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmsastro/2509587198/ "photo sharing") [Cocoon Nebula     Originally uploaded by banarger. Flickr Find 4 of 5. I thought it was…

Antennae Galaxies

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/18982521@N00/2533325842/ "photo sharing")     Antennae Galaxies - Originally uploaded by dgoodin. Flickr Find 3 of 5. I thought…

My Beef with Gravity Waves

Yesterday there was brief moment when I thought that they had announced the first detection of a gravitational wave by LIGO. Needless to say, this turned out…

Space Puzzle T-Shirt

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/5tpkn.jpg) Here’s a cool new design from the Orbiting Frog Shop. It’s a…

First Try at Saturn

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcarnault/2534195384/ "photo sharing") First try at Saturn - Originally uploaded by Marc Arnault. Flickr Find 2 of 5. I…

Galaxy Zoo Says Thanks

Galaxy Zoo has put up a sort of thank you poster to all its volunteers. The names listed are those people who, when signing up to Galaxy Zoo, gave permission…

Ice on Mars

Universe today reports on the Phoenix lander’s amazing good fortune at having landed on one of the very things they were searching for: ice. The probe’s…

Phoenix from HiRISE

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/phoenixfromhirrise.jpg) This HiRISE image shows a 10km crater on the…

Phoenix Mars Lander Web Site Hacked

A spokeswoman for the Phoenix Mars Lander mission says a hacker took over the mission’s public Web site during the night and changed its lead news story.…

Polarity

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/pchee/2537531110/ "Star Trails") Polarity - Originally uploaded by Computer Science Geek. Flickr Find 1 of 5. I thought it was…

Making Craters with Down2Earth

Here is a great astronomy website for some fun this weekend called Down2Earth. You input some parameters and then simulate an asteroid impact (onto Wales no…

Predicted Solar Eclipse Stops Battle

Wired does great, little articles very well. This one concerns a solar eclipse in Asia Minor that ended a battle and how astronomy has helped to date the…

Carnival of Space 56

It is Carnival time again and this week’s host is the Lifeboat Foundation. I submitted two links to this week’s carnival but neither have made the cut. One was…

Explosions on the Moon

Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times. This great NASA site shows…

How to Win the Google Lunar X Prize

The Google Lunar X Prize competition is open to all, but to take your best shot at the pot, you’ll need a good game plan. Popular Mechanics can help. read…

On Science and Religion

This is being posted as my response to the Compatibility of Science and Religion debate. People always argue that science and religion do not deal with the…

.Astronomy Conference

[](http://dotastronomy.com/) I am running a conference in September and I’m inviting astronomers and astronomy bloggers from anywhere! If you’re interested in…

Obligatory Phoenix Post

Plantetary landers are far from my speciality, so I’ll not dwell on Phoenix too long. Last night’s landing was well-covered by the blogosphere and in…

Giant Telescope Connects London to New York

A British artist, Paul St. George, has create a ‘telectroscope’ connecting New York and London. The two portals allow people to stare at each other, in…

Carnival of Space 55

This week’s Carnival of Space is being hosted by a website called Catholic Sensibility, who’s subtitle “faith in God, life on Earth, inspiration for the…

Seeing Spots

Via Star Stryder, and Hubble: there are now three red spots on Jupiter! I shan’t harp on about it, but rather I will say that I think you should Pam’s post (in…

Phoenix

The Mars lander, Phoenix will be touching down near the North Pole of the red planet on May 25th. It is an exciting mission, which is setting out to explore…

Timecube!

“Academia is an accreditation of real stupidity - deadly to all humanity. Dumb ass teachers fear Time Cube and will eat dung before debating it. Dumb students…

Amazing Space Station Sightings Coming Up

May 22nd and 23rd will be providing some excellent opportunities for seeing the International Space Station from Europe and North America. The details of each…

Carnival of Space 54

I keep forgetting to plug the Carnival of Space. Well number 54 is out and is full of loads of stuff. I haven’t read it all myself yet, but figured I’d post…

Colbert Talks to the ISS

Stephen Colbert interviewed International Space Station resident and Wriststrong supporter, Garret Reisman during his May 8th edition. I only just caught it,…

Earth Set to Receive Alien Reply in 2015?

From Gizmodo: If all goes well (or very wrong) Earth may receive a message from aliens from the Altair solar system as early as 2015. The message could be a…

Swiss Rocketman

The BBC is running a video of Yves Rossy, a Swiss man who jumped from a plane and then flew using his homemade jet-propelled glider. The image above shows a…

Microsoft Launch WorldWide Telescope

Microsoft has released its highly anticipated Worldwide Telescope software, which can be used by astronomers and non-astronomers alike to explore the heavens…

Microsoft Launch WorldWide Telescope

Microsoft has released its highly anticipated Worldwide Telescope software, which can be used by astronomers and non-astronomers alike to explore the heavens…

Retrograde Motion

Planets move relative to the stars always moving from west to east in the sky. Well almost always. Every once in a while, a planet will slow down in its…

Spacetime and Spin

A lovely little lowdown from the Gravity Probe B project on the nature of spacetime, the interestingness of the number 3 and some fairly advanced stuff about…

Did Earth Once Have Multiple Moons?

From New Scientist: The ancient catastrophe that gave birth to the Moon may have produced additional satellites that lingered in Earth’s skies for tens of…

A Prime Example or a Constant Message

In our search for intelligent life in the universe (good idea or otherwise), we need in some way to prove we, too are intelligent. Classic science fiction…

Impossible Smells Exhibition Opens

The world’s first exhibition of ‘extinct and impossible’ smells is under way, from the metallic fallout of the first atomic bomb to the aroma of cloves and…

Carnival of Space 1st Anniversary

A year of Carnival of Space! Well there you go. Check it out over on the Why Homeschool blog. While you’re there, see if you can tell me why a blog about…

I'm Being Dugg

Why not join in and Digg me too? read more | digg story

Timeline of the Very Young Universe

The very earliest moments of the Big Bang are still the focus of intense research, and the final word is not yet in. This Telegraph article outlines the…

Two Views of Earth

To mark Earth Day, space.com show these two images of the Earth. One taken in 1960, the other in 1996, they illustrate nicely how things have changed in terms…

10 Most Hilarious Sky Mall Products

If, like me, you’ve been lucky enough to have flown with an airline that stocks the Sky Mall catalogue then you’ll know it’s brilliant. This is a magazine…

Carnival of Space 50

The fiftieth Carnival of Space is up on KySat. Visit it now for much astronomy bloggage. Also, who knew Kentucky had a space program?

Reviewing Comet Holmes

I had a question via email asking about Comet Holmes. I thought that by answering it on the blog, maybe others would also have some questions answered. so,…

IYA 2009 Trailer

Trailers seem to be the ‘in thing’ these days. There is a (very long) trailer for the BLAST experiment’s movie somewhere out on the internet. Today, this very…

JAXA Release High Definition Moon Map

Selene, the JAXA spacecraft that has been mapping the Moon using its Laser Altimeter, has had a major new data release. These preliminary images form part of…

Top Ten Animals in Space

I can hardly type this without thinking of the Muppets’ ‘Pigs in Space’. Whilst writing about space debris recently, and preparing to do a talk on the subject…

The Value of Space Exploration

There is an interesting conversation taking place on Universe Today. You’ll currently find a list of short answers to the question ‘what is the value of space…

Short Film: Das Rad

I wouldn’t normally post items like this one, but this is a great little film I found on YouTube called ‘Das Rad’. Its English title is apparently ‘Rocks’. It…

Space Litter

ESA have released information on the incredible content of the skies above our heads. In their press release they outline what exactly is littering orbital…

New T-Shirts in Orbiting Frog Shop

Two new designs in the Orbiting Frog Shop this week that are worth noting. ‘Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining’ depicts a cloud blocking the Sun whilst a series…

Carnival of Space 49

Will Gater, who helped us out with the NAM Blog recently, is hosting the 49th Carnival of Space. There are some nice articles in it this week, particularly Out…

Nebulae in 3D

One of my posters at the UK National Astronomy Meeting was about using 3D to look at data in a different way. Whilst I was looking into 3D astronomy I came…

SCUBA-2 Installed on the JCMT

Well it finally happened: SCUBA’s successor, SCUBA-2 has been installed on the JCMT in Hawaii. SCUBA stands for Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array and…

Carnival of Space 48

Hosting the carnival this week is Next Big Future. It covers Mars, Red Dwarfs, Astronomy meetings, The Forbidden Planet, Dr Who, aliens that could hide their…

If ET Calls, Would We Be Told?

Dugg from Universe Today: If a verified message from aliens is ever received, would the public really be told about it? SETI has an international protocol that…

Orbiting Frog: Recovering

After a brief abuse of my servers by someone or something, I am just about back up and running. Those of you using the 100 Brightest Satellites on Google Earth…

NAM 2008: NAMBlog

This week sees the UK’s biggest astronomy conference take place in Belfast. The location moves around but the news is always interesting and those attending…

Hiatus

Apologies for the lack of blogging this week, I am away in Alabama. I have not been entirely disconnected from astronomy though. I have noted the reorientation…

NAM Poster: 3D HARP Data

This is my second conference poster and it is going up at the UK National Astronomy meeting in a couple of weeks. It will found in the Star Formation section…

Dance Your PhD

Two Oxford archaeologists have won the first ever ‘Dance Your PhD’ contest, which was held in Vienna last month. Dr Brian Stewart, (with help from one Giulia…

Dextre

As if Canadarm wasn’t the best name of anything in space (it’s a Canadian arm for the International Space Station), the Canadian Space Agency has now put…

NAM Poster: SCUBA on Google Sky

This is my first poster for a conference and it is going up at the UK National Astronomy meeting in a couple of weeks. Based on my SCUBA layer for Google Sky,…

Digging APOD

Listen, I love APOD but I am a bit fed up of everyone on Digg filling up the digg/space category with endless APOD images. They’re very pretty, and we all like…

Google Sky on the Web

Well what do you know, as soon as I make myself a wavelength slider for Google Sky, Google go ahead and pass me by by releasing the much anticipated web…

Carnival of Space 45

A new host for the Carnival of Space this week which you can find right here. Welcome to the community Missy Frye.

Great Shuttle Launch Photo

Found this image via Digg and it’s so cool I thought I’d share. One of those pictures where the the photographer captured something we’re all fairly used to…

Google Sky Wavelength Slider

I’ve been wishing there was a wavelength slider in Google Sky ever since it launched and so I have tried to make one. Well I’ve started to make one and thought…

Jodrell Bank on eBay

Some merry soul has put Jodrell Bank up for sale on eBay. Who knew the world famous radio telescope would work from the 12V jack in your car?! PS…

Space Songs

With the recent news that we will beaming the Beatles to Polaris, I got to thinking about good songs that are space related. Here’s what I came up with: -…

Dark Halos Discovered on Mercury

Scientists studying the harvest of photos from the MESSENGER spacecraft’s Jan. 14th flyby of Mercury have found several craters with strange dark halos and one…

Thanks for the Recent Activity

Orbiting Frog has been a busy place in 2008! We are only a small way into the year but already Orbiting Frog seems to have overspilled to the extent to which I…

The Anomaly is Back

The Pioneer Anomaly is the effect seen in the paths of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft as they traveled out of the Solar System. An unknown force appears to…

Martian Avalanche Caught on Camera

Bad Astronomy writes about how HiRISE caught an avalanche on Mars’ North Pole recently. There is a really nice image here. read more | digg story

Featured Web Apps for iPhone

My LookUp web app has been mentioned on TUAW. It tells you when to spot various satellites including the ISS over just about anywhere in the world. Another app…

Stealing Time

Today is February 29th, the ‘extra’ day we are given every four years to bring the calendar back into sync with the actual time it takes the Earth to go around…

Digg the Carnival of Space

As a community of astronomy blogs we ought to be digging the Carnival of Space each week. So here’s the Carnival Oscars Digg submission. Get digging! read more…

NASA Plans To Crash into the Moon

NASA is gearing up to crash two probes into the moon’s South Pole on purpose to look for hidden water. Crude, but effective. I hope they don’t hit any Chinese…

Which Planet Fits Your Mug?

This week’s featured item from the Orbiting Frog Shop comes from the Astronomy section. Coasters depicting the relative sizes of the planets let you see how…

You Like Me, You Really Like Me

Carnival of Space #43 is out in the wild, hosted this week by Stars with a Bang! and Oscar-themed. I have won Best Animated Feature. [Link] For more info on…

Video of Spy Satellite Getting Shot Down

Watch as General Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shows how the Navy Aegis missile launches and successfully destroys the rogue spy…

The end is near...

New calculations predict that the Earth will be swallowed up by the Sun in about 7.6 billion years unless the Earth’s orbit can be altered. read more | digg…

Eagle Nebula in Two Wavelengths

We just had a great star formation talk from Professor Ralf Klessen from the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg…

NGC 4676: Colliding Galaxies

These two mighty galaxies are pulling each other apart. Known as ” The Mice” because they have such long tails, each spiral galaxy has likely already passed…

Light Reflection

Backdropped against the blackness of space, the STS-122 external fuel tank begins its relative separation from the space shuttle Atlantis. The fan-shaped…

ESA's Cosmic Vision: Part 3

My two previous posts have covered what ESA is currently working on and and what ESA may be doing in the decade 2015-2025. So what happens next? Well it may…

Some Eclipse Videos and Images

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/viaan/2280307279/in/pool-636127@N24) So I didn’t get to see the lunar eclipse last night because of the cloud. But no matter!…

ESA's Cosmic Vision: Part 2

In a previous post I gave a quick run down of where ESA currently stands with regard to missions into space. Now for the lowdown on where they intend to be…

Lunar Eclipse from Another Perspective

In my previous post, detailing tonight’s Lunar Eclipse (the last until December 2010), I included a YouTube video I made showing what you might expect to see…

ESA's Cosmic Vision: Part 1

We had a talk yesterday from Dr. Fabio Favata titled “Space Astronomy in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan”. Cosmic Vision is the European Space Agency’s…

'Hundreds of worlds' in Milky Way

Rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our Solar System, a study has found. This is one of…

Science is NOT faith-based

A great deconstruction from the Bad Astronomer on why science isn’t just as based on faith as religion is. read more | digg story

Lunar Eclipse 2008: A Guide

This Wednesday there will be a total eclipse of the Moon. Totality will last for 51 minutes and will be visible throughout Europe, North America, the Pacific…

Orbiting Frog Shop

Orbiting Frog is spreading out and heading into other parts of the internet. You can now buy science and astronomy based goodies via the Orbiting Frog Shop!…

Carnival of Space 41

This time hosted by The Fool: [Carnival of Space 41. ](http://newfrontiersblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/carnival-of-space-41.html)

Hilarious Telescope Packaging

Just a quick note to point out Stuart’s post at the Astronomy Blog, showing off some packaging for a telescope produced by Oxford University:…

Farthest Galaxy Found, Perhaps

Images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed the galaxy at almost 13 billion light-years away, making it the strongest candidate for the most…

Crocheted Models of Hyperbolic Space

At first she tried knitting - and you can indeed knit hyperbolic surfaces - but the large number of stitches on the needles quickly becomes unmanageable and…

Orders of Scale

Found this nice little animated gif file via Digg. Worth a look, as it scales the Earth next to the other planets and some stars. Can’t find the original link…

Carnival of Space 40

Hello and welcome to the 40th Carnival of Space! I thought I’d add a bit of javascript into my page for a change - it’s the HTML equivalent of a mid-life…

10 Awesome Space Wallpapers

Here are some of my personal favourite wallpapers for your desktop (and iPhone). Sizes 1900x1200, 1024x768, 1280x800 and 800x600 are all here to fill your eyes…

Look Up: iPhone Satellite Predictions

Look Up (v1.0) is an iPhone (or iPod touch) web application that can tell you when to look out for satellites in the night sky. It covers pretty much anywhere…

Finding the door to a parallel universe

Though no direct evidence for wormholes has been observed, this could be because they are disguised as black holes. Now Alexander Shatskiy of the Lebedev…

An Example of Light Pollution

Light pollution, also known as photopollution or luminous pollution, is excess or obtrusive light created by humans. Among other effects, it disrupts…

Carnival of Space #39

There’s a new Carnival of Space out, this week hosted by Visual Astronomy. It features yours truly among others. Check it out! Carnival of Space #39

Hyperfast Star Proven To Be Alien

A young star is speeding away from the Milky Way so fast that astronomers have been puzzled by where it came from; based on its young age it has traveled too…

Omnipresent Astronomy

The recent pass of Comet Holmes and today’s close approach of Asteroid 2007 TU24 (shown below, image from space.com) have gotten me thinking again about open…

Gemini: Cancelled

Stuart over at Astronomy Blog is breaking the bad news that the UK is now going to have to completely pull out of Gemini. All future UK observations are…

Asteroid 2007 TU24

Discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on October 11 last year, this 150-600m asteroid will closely approach the Earth in the next few days. It will pass within…

Internet Group Declares war on Scientology

The Internet group Anonymous has declared war on Scientology and has begun by attacking the cult’s website with a denial of service attack. Usually content to…

SpaceShipTwo Unveiled

Yes, I’m little last to the game on this one, but since loads of kids have asked me about it this week, I thought I’d post. Virgin has revealed the design on…

The Universe Within 1 Billion Light Years

Galaxies and clusters of galaxies are not uniformly distributed in the Universe, instead they collect into vast clusters and sheets and walls of galaxies…

Emily and the Bigfoot

This is an awesome, and much discussed post from the Planetary Society blog:…

Mars Foot - A Picture of a Martian, Sort of

I’ll put this one to you as simply as possible. It’s a picture from one of the Mars rovers that appears to show a person (or a rock), walking along the Martian…

Incoming Message from the Big Giant Head

Originally posted in August 2007. There was a New Scientist feature last week on Boltzmann Brains. Now I hadn’t heard of these before, and so I thought it may…

First African satellite launched

In a landmark launch that will supposedly “contribute to bridging the digital divide within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world,” the…

Comet Seen Between Fireworks and Lightning

People from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day…

Save Astronomy

Funding for astronomy and physics is being cut in the UK. This site is a rallying point for those who want to protest this. Go here, write to your MP, tell…

Excuse Me While I Touch This Guy

This is a cool idea: a space book for the visually impaired and blind. Using a combination of braille, embossing and textured images, this amazing new book is…

iPhone and iPod Touch ISS Transits

Okay this gets a bit tenuous, but what the hell? If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch and live in any of my Over Twitter feed cities (Aix, Birmingham,…

Link Log

You will now start to see the Link Log appearing on Orbiting Frog.’s main pages These are the links that pop up between posts in a darker grey box. Rather than…

A New Side to Mercury

The MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Mercury on Monday evening in one of three scheduled slow-down fly-bys before it begins orbiting the planet in a few years.…

Opening an Infrared Window

UKIRT, the UK InfraRed Telescope which sits on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, has recently released a set of data from the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS). For…

Bad Astronomered

A quick glance at my blog statistics reveals that I was the recipient of a spike in traffic last Friday (see graphic). Sites used to have trouble when they got…

Blog Upgrades

I have been busy updating, tweaking and repairing Orbiting Frog over the past few days. It is almost done now. Sorry if anyone has arrived to find crazy lines…

Largest Diamond Found in Space

A 10 billion trillion trillion carat core of a dead star is apparently being called the largest diamond of all time. read more | digg story

Save Patrick Moore's Typewriter

I really don’t know why I feel compelled to so something like this but, Patrick Moore’s Woodstock typewriter is broken and no one knows how to fix it. Do any…

The Stability of the Solar System

Yesterday’s Astrolunch talk was given by Prof. Mike Disney on the Stability of the Solar System. It was the first of two talks, and in of itself was very…

Giant Cloud of Antimatter Explained

I always wondered where they get all the antimatter to power the starships in Star Trek. Maybe they get it from the centre of the galaxy. New results from…

Mercury Rising

Today at 1904 GMT, the NASA spacecraft Messenger will make its first approach of Mercury, the inner-most planet of our solar system. This evening’s approach is…

Is the Universe a Computer?

Over on the Cosmic Variance blog, there is a post covering the question of whether the Universe is a big computer, or as CV puts it, maybe its more like a…

Hubble Finds Double Einstein Ring

A recent ESA press release displays a lovely a Hubble image of what is charmingly known as gravitational lens system SDSSJ0946 1006. The gravitational effect…

UFOs? Maybe Not

There’s a video going around the web of a UFO sighting on New Year’s Day in San Diego. As usual everyone says a whole lot about what is wasn’t. You can find…

Sunspot Cycle 24

A new 11-year sunspot cycle is about to begin, according to some blogs and other sources. I know very little about the Sun but am pretty sure that nothing…

Lintott Lives!

Chris Lintott, over on his blog, has been reporting from the American Astronomical Meeting (AAS). In one post he has been detailing how astronomers have died…

NASA Space Station Concepts

This is a nice link from Digg about concepts for space stations. just goes to show how varied and wide the shapes and sizes for space-faring vehicles could…

New Horizons Jupiter Image

This is a lovely image from APOD earlier this week showing Io and Jupiter as seen by the New Horizons craft en route to Pluto. This is one of those computer…

The Jodcast

In the kind of circles I run in (you know, my high falootin’ scene) I am often asked where to find astronomy resources for the everyman. These people, and the…

Have a Wonderfully Secular Christmas

This morning at 6.08am (GMT) was the official mark of the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Today is the shortest day for us here in the UK and the…

Help an Astronomer this Christmas

…by signing this official Downing Street petition regarding the current status of funding for astronomy in the UK. It’s quick and easy and if you think…

JCMT Liveblog

Tonight I am at the JCMT on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and wil be trying to liveblog the night as we go. This may prove utterly boring, but may be useful. Only time…

Where in the World

A lot of people have been asking me where I am right now. ‘Where is the telescope’? ‘Can I Google it’?. Well it’s the JCMT telescope and although you might not…

Comet Holmes: An Overview

It was a little while ago now that Comet Holmes first came into our sights in Perseus. It flared from magnitude 17 to 2.8 in only two days and has since been…

ISS on Twitter for Hawaii

For purely selfish reasons I have added two new feeds to my Over… series of Twitter feeds, which update users to upcoming ISS and Hubble transits in their…

Observing Run

Soon I will be off on an observing run in Hawaii. I will be using the 15m JCMT telescope on Mauna Kea to take spectral line data using an instrument called…

Record Fifth Planet Orbiting Nearby Star

Astronomers have announced the discovery of a fifth planet circling 55 Cancri, a star beyond our solar system. The star now holds the record for number of…

Simple Telescope Markup Language

Stuart (Astronomy Blog) has been busy working on the telescope XML that has been discussed before. Well he has actually posted some working feeds in what he…

Space Exploration 3.0

The number of space agencies in the world has been steadily rising since the 1990s and reached 36 in 2005. Bilateral and multilateral agreements between…

How I'm Related to Isaac Newton

I have been researching my family history for quite some years now. Something that has always fascinated me is how very many people it has taken for each of us…

The Anatomy of a Black Hole

A great interactive guide explaining everything you need to know about black holes.read more | digg story

Mac OSX Westie

Well its finally here! I have just upgraded my Macbook to the new Westie operating system and I’m already seeing the advantages. For starters my lovely white…

Can You Spot Comet Holmes?

Chris Lintott is reporting on his blog on Comet Holmes, which ought to be a magnitude 17 object but recently clocked in at mag 10 and then mag 3, making it a…

Fark

My Ten Strangest Things in Space was picked up by fark.com yesterday and thus another 10,000 hits have battered my Site5 servers. Amongst the comment section…

Look Into My Eyes

Here’s a cool thing: I now have a picture of my retinas. Below you can see both my eyes (left then right in case you were wondering) in full colour, as…

Over Cloud

The Over Cardiff and related Twitter feeds should now only issue warnings when the weather is fine. This has been achieved using Yahoo! Weather’s RSS API,…

Telescope XML

Stuart over at Astronomy Blog is trying to organise the creation of an XML structure for astronomical observations. He proposed the idea a short while ago but…

Finally

I finally caught the Space Station in Cardiff last night. Having rained on me all day, it finally cleared up and was almost cloudless at both times for the ISS…

Playing with Google Sky

I have been playing with Google Sky recently. As a sort of case-study, I made for myself a little script that overlays data from NASA’s SkyView website onto…

Things Are Looking Up

If you haven’t already then now is the time to subscribe to the Twitter feeds I made for many cities around the world. As of about the 4th of October it will…

A Brief Explanation

If you’ve ever wondered what it is that I do (this one’s for all you family and friend types), then worry no more. Today I’m giving a talk to the incoming PhD…

ISS and Hubble in the sidebar

In addition to putting the Heaven’s Above transits of the ISS and Hubble into Twitter feeds for 14 cities (so far), I have also put them in the sidebar right…

The Space Station On Twitter

I read a while ago on Astronomy Blog that there was a Twitter feed called About London (developers’ blog) for International Space Station (ISS) passes…

A New Distance to Rho Oph

A very timely new paper to aide me in my research which states that Rho Oph is 135pc away. give or take a few parsecs. read paper

Did the Goats Help?

A recent BBC News article tells how Nepal Airlines were having trouble with an aircraft and so decided to sacrifice two goats in front of the plane to appease…

Ordinary Guys Send Balloon 22.27 Miles Up

Behold the view from 117,597 feet, taken on August 11, 2007 by a camera hanging from a helium balloon launched by a group of guys in Alberta, Canada. Called…

Watch Out Stephen

As a fan of Moon Landing rebuttals and a big Wriststrong supporter, I would love to see this happen. Phill vs Stephen.…

A Hole Found in the Universe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A giant hole in the Universe is devoid of galaxies, stars and even lacks dark matter, astronomers said on Thursday. The team at the…

Diving Deep

A recent BBC News article has prompted a couple of people to mention ‘this thing called SCUBA’ to me. The article is about the new SCUBA-2 submillimetre camera…

That Old Chestnut

A religious debate may be brewing in the comment thread on my 10 Things post. All views welcome…

APOD on Twitter

Stuart puts APOD on Twitter. Cool idea. read more | digg story

Get Off Your Arse for the Perseids

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/geoff1f/759253017/ "photo sharing") [Colorado Meteor Originally uploaded by Mr Geoff. Yes its that time of year again, get your…

Perseids Overview from Astronomy Blog

Astronomy Blog gives a great little overview of the upcoming meteor shower, including a top pic from Stellarium. I love this shower because I’m often in France…

Jupiter Animation from Chandra

I’m just prepping another post at the moment but came across this great animation on my travels. It shows Jupiter as seen from the Chandra satellite, which…

Amazing Photosynth from NASA

If you haven’t heard of Photosynth, its an incredible idea from Microsoft’s labs (yes they do cool stuff too!). Basically the concept is that as more and more…

The Frog is Back in Orbit... I Think

I think that Orbiting Frog is now back online. I have moved to Site5 for the hosting and the domain is transitioned so far as I can tell. I’m sorry for any…

Mars Won't be as Big as a Full Moon

Every year it comes around now, the email that says Mars will be as big as the Full Moon in August this year. It is a junk email that was a misinterpretation…

Most Detailed Pictures of Earth Ever Seen

“These spectacular images are the most detailed pictures of Earth ever seen.” Or so says th article - however I’m not sure its quite so true as they don’t link…

Flickr Find: IRAM

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/juanjaen/868885706/ "photo sharing") [IRAM 30m Sierra Nevada Originally uploaded by juanjaen. This is an Infra Red telescope…

Open Source Astronomy: Galaxy Zoo

Just the other day I was opining about how the internet needs to get in bed with science a bit more. Well lo and behold here is a fantastic example of just…

Loosening the Belt

So my name is now on a (soon-to-be) published paper. How and why this happened is a little over my head, but I shall try to explain. One thing you should know…

Gay Rights Mean Floods, Says Idiot Bishop

What is it that making my blood boil? No, its not the holy wrath of God seeking revenge on my pro gay-rights, pro-choice, left-wing morals; its the Right…

The Podcasts Are Here

It wasn’t long ago that I was thinking to myself ‘where are all the science podcasts?’, now I have too many! When i first got my iPod a couple of years ago…

Fly Me to the Moon

I had my first day working for SETPOINT Wales yesterday in their mobile planetarium, the Stardome. I went to Crickhowell High School and had a great (if tiring…

Science and the Internet

> If the tail was smarter, the tail would wag the dog. Two things have just come back to me at the same time and collided wonderfully, thanks to an article…

Blogosphere: This Week in Astronomy

So what’s caught my eye this week? Well let’s see shall we. A night on the (not-so-bare) mountain, from Chris Lintott. Chris went observing in Hawaii and let…

Spitzer

Wednesday’s seminar speaker was Robert Kennicutt, the principal investigator of the SINGS project (Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey). They have been…

A Solar Eclipse From Above

This image appeared on APOD the other day. It shows a solar eclipse as viewed from space. Very cool. This image was taken from the old MIR station during the…

The Wake of Physics

Following last week’s open letter to the AQA, Wellington Grey has posted on his blog to thank everyone for their support. It seems he had quite a response,…

You Are a Time Traveller

The other day we were driving along and I found out that a friend of mine’s father is a commercial airline pilot. We chatted about it for a while - apparently…

Blogosphere: This Week in Astronomy

New idea for a weekly blog post detailing the week’s interesting blog entries. So here we go… Latest Declamations about the Arrow of Time, from Cosmic…

Living Space

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/Picture%201.png "Living Space Screencap") There is a new podcast called…

International Space Station over Cardiff

Attention Cardiff citizens - I know you’re out there - the ISS is coming to our city. Well honestly, the ISS passes over us all the time but there are two nice…

The Death of Physics

Wellington Grey is a guy I just read about on BoingBoing. He is a physics teacher in the UK who is currently very irked by the teaching of his subject (I…

The Stars of Tomorrow

What follows is my submitted entry for the Wellcome Trust’s New Scientist Essay Competition 2007. There are prizes involved and the top one is publication of…

The Science of Zara

I have been listeing to the audiobook version of J. Surowiecki’s ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’. Its a really intetresting book that looks at the way group decision…

Essential Science - Part 2

So I’m still musing about the reasons for studying star formation and so I have begun trying to think in a more positive way. This is what I came up with…

Essential Science - Part 1

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/Sombrero%20Spitzer%20Big.jpg "Sombrero Spitzer Big.jpg") > Why is my…

Flickr Find: Burning Clouds

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/holeinone/508639736/ "photo sharing")[The morning sun burns into the clouds…Originally uploaded by hole-in-one. This image from…

Go With the Flow

Wired are reporting on a feasability study from the NASA Institute for Advanced Studies on a giant liquid mirror telescope that could potentially be placed on…

ACSIS and HARP

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii has two new instruments called HARP and ACSIS.They work in conjunction and together they recently took…

The Windmills of Your Mind

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/TrudyEBellleafTrails.jpg "Tree Trails") A recent Astronomy Picture of…

Flickr Find: ISS Photo

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/33906436@N00/476870686/ "photo sharing")[ISSOriginally uploaded by jarguel. Haven’t seen much that I’ve liked in the…

Red Skies

Mars is back, and doing things it shouldn’t! Our warring friend started May in the constellation Aquarius, it then moved into Pisces on the 8th. For a really…

Blowing Smoke

A while ago I posted about the Bullet Cluster, and an image which seems to reveal the dark matter within it. Now a new image from Hubble seems to do the same…

Now for the 2.2 Day Forecast

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/ssc2007.jpg "Exoplanet Map") Researchers using NASA’s Spitzer Space…

Brightest Supernova Ever Recorded

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/sn2006gy.jpg "sn2006gy.jpg") NASA’s Chandra observatory, in unison with…

Play the Xylophone... Please

Octogenarians should not be put in charge of policy at the BBC. (Link). God bless Sir Patrick for not being PC, but it did make me cringe. We should be able to…

Robot Astronomers

I was listening to the May edition of the Jodcast earlier and they were talking to one Carole Mundell who works at the Liverpool Telescope with Gamma Ray…

From the Heart

The Darwin Lecture for the National Astronomy Meeting 2007 was given by Dr. Reinhard Genzel. He spoke about the black hole which sits at the centre of the…

The Little Star That Could

This week’s Astrolunch talk was given by Vanessa Stroud from the Faulkes Telescope Group. As is always the case though, this talk was unrelated to her PhD…

NASA's Trouble and Our Own

The BBC has an interesting article on how as NASA’s money is redirected into other endeavours (say into manned travel to Mars and the like) its existing…

Most Earth-Like Planet Found

I know this is literally yesterday’s news but here is my take on the story anyway. Researchers using the ESO 3.6m telescope in Chile have analysed the wobble…

Ghost in the Machine

](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Dark%20Matter%20and%20the%20Bullet%20Cluster.jpg "Dark Matter and the…

Hubble Can Drive

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/heic0707a.jpg "Eta Carinae Star Forming Region") So Hubble is now 17…

The Sun in 3D

These days we’ve all seen pictures of other worlds in stunning detail. We are familiar with pictures of the Moon and of the Earth and well know that the…

Do Not Cross This Line

NASA researchers using the Spitzer space telescope have laid out what they have called ‘planetary danger zones’ around stars. In these zones, extending from…

In the Wake of NAM

I have a big notebook from the National Astronomy Meeting filled with notes and asterisks and doodles on abstracts for talks that I wanted to come back to.…

Jodcast Widget

You may recall I blogged about The Jodcast. There are some podcasts I find I listen to on my iPod and there others I listen to on my Mac. The former is easy…

NAM 2007 on Flickr

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttfnrob/sets/72157600088947876/ "NAM 2007 Mosaic") My NAM 2007 photos are up on Flickr. not very astronomy related, more the…

Parkes Telescope

[](http://oldblog.orbitingfrog.com/2007/04/22/parkes-telescope/parkes-telescope/ "Parkes Telescope") At NAM I heard a great talk by Gary Fuller on Methanol…

HST Servicing Mission 4

NASA head Mike Griffin has said that they will go and fix Hubble in September 2008. Service Mission Four (SM4) will not leave for Hubble any earlier than…

I Knew It

[](http://oldblog.orbitingfrog.com/2007/04/19/i-knew-it/42816183startrekbamford416borderjpg/ "42816183startrekbamford416border.jpg") I should have guessed that…

NAM 2007 Day Two

Day two of the UK’s National Astronomy Meeting was very good. It started with two excellent talks given by two excellent speakers. It ended with drinks and…

The Jodcast

[](http://www.jodcast.net/ "Jodcast") What do you call a podcast from Jodrell Bank? Well duh, its a Jodcast (Link). Running since early 2006, the Jodcast from…

Wikisky

Just a quick one before I finally go to bed. Check out Wikisky (Link). It basically Google Maps but for space. It only covers data from IRAS and the Sloane…

Astronomy Question Time

At 7.30pm on Monday night there was a ‘Question Time’ event held in the Greenbank Lecture Theatre of the NAM 2007 venue. The format was four speakers sat in a…

Back in NAM

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttfnrob/462591950/ "photo sharing") [Greenbank Building Originally uploaded by ttfnrob. Obviously not vietNAM but the UK’s…

NAM Day One

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/RASStand.JPG "RASStand.JPG") After arriving via the train (changing at…

Eat It

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/974441262b1296d6f.jpg "Eat Shitto") Boing Boing, I do so love your…

My Easter Message

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Picture%202.png "Picture 2.png") Look at the picture above carefully…

Cardiff to New York: For Free

[](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/Picture%201.png "Google Maps across the Atlantic") I don’t know how…

Justin.TV

The video above is the live feed from justin.tv an experiment in web video created by Justin, the star of the ‘show’ and three of his friends. In an effort to…

Floating Fun

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttfnrob/422323147/ "photo sharing") [Magnet Levitates Originally uploaded by ttfnrob. In last week’s lab we had some more fun…

Listen Up

I listen to a lot of music. On my iPod and on my laptop you will find a vast array of recently played tracks in one playlist (smart or otherwise) or another.…

Dydd G?yl Dewi yn y Labordy Ffiseg

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/huwwaters/407100509/ "photo sharing") [Dydd G?yl Dewi yn y Labordy Ffiseg Originally uploaded by huwwaters. I don’t speak Welsh…

Lunar Eclipse: Reminder

Just a quick reminder to look our for tomorrow’s total lunar eclipse. Its starts at around 9.30pm with totality from 10.45pm to midnight (approx). For more…

Pluto's Still A Planet

So if you know me you’ll know that I’m annoyed about Pluto being demoted last year to Dwarf Planet. Well I’ve decided its now time to let it go. Pluto is still…

Lunar Eclipse: March 3rd

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/fortphoto/183865953/ "photo sharing") [Phases of a Total Lunar Eclipse Originally uploaded by Fort Photo. Lunar eclipses are…

The Faulkes Telescope

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttfnrob/389225389/ "photo sharing")[M16 The Eagle Nebula Originally uploaded by ttfnrob. Today I had the chance to quiz my…

The Cardiff Snow

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/martyn/384213144/ "photo sharing") [two Originally uploaded by late night movie. So I think we just had Winter. Thursday and…

Monty the Snowplough

](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttfnrob/383525770/ "photo sharing")[Monty the Snowplough Originally uploaded by ttfnrob. Our little monster, Monty had his…

Sky Delights

](http://oldblog.atomic-temporary-53335355.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/mcnaught3.jpg "Stunning Comet McNaught Photo")[…