With the evening sky becoming darker as the year goes on, the brighter stars are becoming more prominent and the constellation figures are coming back
The Sky Above You – September 2023
Why I Don’t Play the Machines
“In early 1967 the late Prof. Oscar Schwiglhofer , founder of the Scottish Branch of the British Interplanetary Society which by then had become independent as ASTRA, was given the chance to use a simulation of a Moon landing on a Strathclyde University computer programme.”
Explore The Moon
Interested in finding out more about The Moon? The Orkney News has several articles about The Moon, many of them written by space expert Duncan Lunan.
Shading the Earth with a Solar Shield
Artist’s rendition of the proposed solar shield tethered to an asteroid as a counterweight. Image credit: Credit: Brooks Bays/UH Institute for Astronomy
The Sky Above You – August 2023
The Moon will be Full on August 3rd, and again on August 31st, a ‘Blue Moon’ Full twice in the same month, and both of them ‘Supermoons’ when it is at its closest to Earth as well as Full.
AU Mic b, a “hot Neptune”: Observing Planet Evolution
An illustration of the planet AU Mic b shedding its atmosphere as it orbits its sun, AU Microscopii. Image credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted, STScI.
The Moon – Curiouser and Curiouser
“just when I thought it was safe to come out of the moonlight”…Petavius B pyramidal closeup
Lunar Anomalies Part 2 – 1366 and All That
Solar activity 3000 BC to present, by Nick Portwin after John A. Eddy).Find out more in this article by Duncan Lunan
The Sky Above You – July 2023
The Moon will be Full on July 3rd, a Supermoon when it is at its closest to Earth as well as Full. It will be New on July 17th, near Venus and Mercury on the 19th and 20th, with Mars in the background but now very much fainter than the inner planets.
More Lunar Anomalies – Part 1
‘Crossing the Crater’ by cosmonaut artist Andrei Sokolov. Reported sightings of strange events involving the Moon go back for at least a thousand years…
