Limerick Astronomy Club

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Simon

2008 Solar Eclipse - Trip to Novosibirsk. In astronomy, there are many types of people in the hobby with many levels of interests. Some go out to dark sites and watch the stars and planets go by, others are happy to sit in a nice warm armchair and read up on the latest discoveries. There is, however...

January night sky (Article 119) With early darkness you can get in a lot of observing at a reasonable hour during January. So, what’s on view at say 10 pm throughout this month? The Moon rises at 2:16 am on the 2nd, but on 13th looking West it will be rising at 10 pm when it will be 5.4 days old wit...

At the edge (Article 120) Pluto is a tiny world that lies 3664 million miles from the Sun. Its orbit of our star takes 248 earth years, so it has not yet made one complete orbit since it was discovered in 1930. Only one fifth the diameter of Earth, this dwarf planet spins on its axis every 6.4 earth...

Permanence? (Article 121) In his poem ‘Like Dolmens Round my Childhood’, John Montague shows how children see old people as having been around forever, like ancient landmarks. Alas, the cycle of life soon dissipates such illusions. Change and the insecurities it brings are welcomed and feared by us ...

Le no. 122 The Gas Giants (Article 122) Two categories of planet orbit the Sun, the terrestrial planets and the gas planets. The terrestrial planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are so called for their hard, rocky surfaces (even though two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is water, it is included in...

February Night Sky (Article 123) So far in 2008 there have not been too many opportunities to note the continuous position changes of the stars and their home constellations as they appear to drift across the sky from East to West. Even experienced observers can be surprised at just how much things ...

The return to Mercury (Article 124) Mercury has long been neglected. The closest to the Sun, its orbital distance is about 58 million kilometres, about one third of the Earth’s distance. Named after the Roman messenger-god, probably due to its fleeting appearances in the twilight skies, its brief ap...

Galaxies (Article 125) A galaxy is a large group of stars, dust, gases and dark matter, mutually bound by gravity and rotating about a common centre of mass. While all galaxies share these characteristics, they have them in almost endless variations. The first variation is size. Galaxies vary from a...

Irish Astronomers (Article126) For a small island, Ireland has contributed more than its fair share to the scientific discoveries of the past three centuries. The first extant report of an Irishman embroiled with medieval church authorities about scientific matters concerns St. Vergilius (Fergal), w...

Great stretch in the evenings (Article 127) At this time of the year when meeting somebody you will often hear the conversation opener ‘great stretch in the evening’ instead of the usual ‘awful weather’ or ‘grand and dry’ or some other weather related comment. It is an optimistic expression and look...

The Pale Blue Dot (Article 128) The image with this article does not look much until you think about just what it is. It is famously called ‘The Pale Blue dot’ and is a photo of Earth (in the centre of the blue circle) set against the vastness of space taken by Voyager 1 from a record distance. Voya...

Jules Verne ATV (Article 129) In 1998, the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) began. Large sections were assembled on Earth and brought into orbit by the space shuttle, it was intended that the shuttle would be the primary work horse for transporting supplies to and from the ISS b...

April night sky (Article 130) Once into April the evenings are getting noticeably brighter and at the beginning of the month it is about 9 pm when the sky is nicely dark and by 30th it is nearly 10 pm before the fainter objects become visible. Let’s have a look at the usual suspects and start with t...

Galileo’s Footsteps (Article 131) This year sees the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope, and while most people have never heard of the Dutch inventor, Hans Lippersey, they have heard of the first person to use it, a year afterwards, for astronomical purposes. At the beginning of the...