New satellite tracking tools – WhatSat Satellite Explorer
Have you ever wondered, what’s orbiting over your head right now? A new satellite-tracking tool called WhatSat can answer that question for you. It’s an app for Android phones
Watch tonight for Eta Aquarid meteor shower!!!
Bits and pieces of the famous Halley’s Comet will light up the overnight sky in a promising meteor shower, weather permitting, skywatching experts say.The annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower will peak early tomorrow morning (May 6) and is expected to put on a
Asteroid impacts in Antarctica
In a controversial study, gravity maps of the Antarctic continent have revealed what could be multiple asteroid impact sites. Gravity anomalies in Antarctica might mark spots where hundreds of thousands of years ago the frozen continent was struck by giant…
Sky watchers – The Lyrid meteors passing by Earth!
Every year in late April Earth passes through the dusty tail of Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1), and the encounter causes a meteor shower–the Lyrids. This year the shower peaks on Friday morning, April 22nd. The best time to look, no matter where you live, is
Lyrids meteor shower
After 3,5 months of weak meteor activity, the Earth enters the drawn-out dusty tail of Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1). Most years in April there are no more than 5 to 20 meteors per hour during the shower’s peak. But sometimes, when Earth glides through an unusually dense
WISE preliminary data release – 57% of the sky
Finally, WISE team has released a data from its sky-mapping mission representing 57 percent of the sky as seen by WISE. This preliminary release will allow astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts worldwide to explore the sky as seen by WISE. It will also allow the WISE te
Asteroid 2011 GP59 – Close Earth-Moon Flyby
Newly-discovered asteroid 2011 GP59 is flying past Earth today, April 15th, not far beyond the orbit of the Moon (1.4 LD). There’s no danger of a collision, but the 50-meter space rock is remarkable: It is elongated and spinning once every 7.5 minutes. This causes
Comet Elenin continues to increase in size
April 8th at our observatory we carried out planned observations of Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin). An analysis of the results of the observations shows a rapid growth of the coma. Besides the internal compact gas envelope, the forming rarified external coma is
Huge asteroid 2005 YU55 to pass near Earth in November
Mark your calendars for an impressive and upcoming flyby of an asteroid (2005 YU55) that’s one of the larger potentially perilous space rocks in the heavens – in terms of smacking the Earth in the future.It’s the case of asteroid 2005 YU55, a round mini-world
A long-lived horseshoe companion to the Earth
There are plenty of near-Earth asteroids out there, but this latest one studied by two researchers at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland is extremely rare in that it has a weird, horseshoe-shaped orbit. Not that Asteroid 2010 SO16 does an about-face and turns