Limerick Astronomy Club

Space Observatories (Article 93) The last two decades have been a golden era in the development of telescopes of all kinds. The revolution in amateur telescope design, such as the Dobsonian or Cassegrain, combine features never before seen on a telescope: high quality optics, straightforward to use,...

July night sky (Article 92) July is the month when we are most likely to be outside late in the evening and judging by the last few very hot Julys the most comfortable place to be is sitting outside as darkness settles and read on for the best July has to offer. The star sprinkled skies reveal the s...

Space telescopes (Article 91) As stated in an earlier article, there are unavoidable limitations on the size of ground based telescopes. However, the dawn of the space age has created new possibilities. The development of rocket science has inspired huge leaps in the advancement of electronics and r...

The Modern Telescope (Article 90) A basic fact about any telescope is the bigger, the better. With a bigger scope, you can see more, more clearly and further away. A telescope’s ‘bigness’ is determined by its light-gathering ability and this is determined by the size of its objective lens or its mir...

A magic kingdom (Article 89) I recall as a young boy whom loved fresh water fishing in the nearby canal, being told by an old hand “A hook in a tackle box will not catch a fish”. The same holds true for astronomy — your eyes being the hook and the wonders of the night sky the fish. Many beginners ar...

The Telescope: a brief history (Article 88) The logo above this article has the usual picture of astronomers: looking through a telescope on cold winter nights, busily searching for stars, comets, and more exotic objects in the celestial zoo! For most amateur astronomers, this is still true. If you ...

June Night Sky (Article 87) During June, the MilkyWay runs high across the eastern sky, its misty glow like some supernatural celestial spectre in the less than dark skies of this month. Low in the north we find Capella, the brightest star in this part of the heavens during the month. Cassiopeia rid...

Venus (Article 86) A casual observer might not know what it is, but if the Western horizon is clear about a half hour after sunset any evening between January and June 2007, it is unmissable. That intense bright spark is not a plane, a satellite, or a UFO — it is our nearest planetary neighbour that...

Celestial Harvest (Article 85) Our terrestrial image of a harvest tends to be associated with a particular season, whereas in the night sky there is a celestial harvest every season. One of spring’s finest symbolic offerings is a cluster of stars in the faint constellation Cancer, known as Praesepe ...

Galaxies - cities of stars (Article 84) All the stars that you can see in the night sky are members of an enormous grouping of thousands of millions of stars called the Galaxy. It is usually given a capital “G” to distinguish it from other galaxies and is frequently referred to as the Milky Way. Onl...

May night sky (Article 83) This month sees summer constellations starting to appear over the horizon. Meantime, the late spring skies are commanded by the orange Arcturus and brilliant white Spica, — heralding long days and not so dark nights ahead. Though there are galaxies to be found in just abou...

Revolving heavens (Article 82) The heavens don’t revolve, it’s the other way round, our Earth is rotating. Even today, this supposedly simple fact goes unnoticed by a surprisingly large number of people. It’s easy to understand why. Just stand under the stars and watch the heavens rise and set over ...

Eclipses (Article 81) Without doubt one of the most spectacular astronomical events is an eclipse. An eclipse (which derives from the Greek work ekeipo “to vanish”) occurs when one celestial object moves into the shadow of another. The term is most commonly used to describe either a solar eclipse (w...

Woman in the Moon (Article 80) As our companion in space, staying together with us in our journey round the Sun, the Moon is the closest of all natural astronomical bodies. At the dawn of human history such facts where unknown, and Stone Age men must have gazed in awe and wondered what it was. For i...

April night sky (Article 79) Though poorly stocked with spectacular stars that you can see without an instrument, April’s night sky does contain two stars that prompt thoughts on the movements involved within our Galaxy. Brilliant Arcturus, easily found as the brightest star seen by following the cu...