Space Station Threshold

Observing a stars brightness pulsate may reveal its internal structure say researchers using the Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) observatory. The highly sensitive orbital telescope can detect tiny variations in a distant star's brightness, leading astronomers into a new field of stellar seismology called ...

Understanding how stars form is critical to astronomers. If we can gain a better understanding of how intermediate-size infant stars grow, we can begin to answer some of the most perplexing questions hanging over the evolution of our own Solar System. Unfortunately, the nearest star forming regions are about 500 light years away, meaning that ...

In May 2000, Australian astrophysicist Dr Rodney David Marks died from acute methanol poisoning whilst stationed at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. He was a 32 year old "brilliant and witty" scientist, whose death shocked his family and friends. The media jumped on this story, citing the tragedy as the "first South Pole ...

The LSST, or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is a large survey telescope being constructed in northern Chile. When operational in 2015, it will be the widest, fastest, deepest eye of the new digital age, providing timelapse digital imaging across the entire night sky every three days, mapping the structure of our dynamic universe [...]

XMM-Newton has just released this beautiful image of a supernova remnant and its companion neutron star. To be more accurate, it didn't "discover" the object, remnant G350.1-0.3 had previously been mistaken to be a distant galaxy. The X-ray observatory has reclassified the object as a Milky Way binary system with one neutron star ...

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has joined forces with telescopes located in North America, South America, Europe and Africa to create the observing power of a radio telescope 6,800 miles (nearly 11,000 kilometres) in diameter. This collaboration is called the Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service (EXPReS) project, and on May 22nd, ...

To celebrate the Very Large Telescope's (VLT) 10th birthday on Tuesday, it was us who received the gifts. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released two magnificent astronomical images of two nebulae, both very different, but spectacular all the same. One is the iconic scene of Eta Carinae (a.k.a. Homunculus, "little man" in ...

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you ready for a great dark sky weekend? Then it's time to walk into the galaxy field of dreams as we take a closer look at part of Markarian's Chain. Even smaller telescopes and larger binoculars will be happy with this weekend's globular clusters! Need more [...]

Hold on to your hats… It's happening again. According to AAVSO Special Notice #105 released on April 19, another possible nova event is now occurring in Sagittarius. Through their quick actions, Macedon Ranges Observatory in Central Victoria, Australia was on top the alert and imaging. (...)Read the rest of Australian Observatory ...

Clouds got you down? No chance of seeing V2491 Cyg because of the weather? Are you sleeping when Cygnus is up? One of the most beautiful facets of having an astronomer around is being able to share information with other observatories around the world and put them to work. This time [...]