Take a look at spaceweather.com www.spaceweather.com/ As well as giving updates on potential aurora sightings, it has a list of PHA's (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids) that are known to come close to, or cross, the Earth's orbit, and also shows a plot of their orbits. However, the worrying word is "Known"

Take a look at spaceweather.com www.spaceweather.com/ As well as giving updates on potential aurora sightings, it has a list of PHA's (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids) that are known to come close to, or cross, the Earth's orbit, and also shows a plot of their orbits. However, the worrying word is "Known"

Awe-inspiring image of the jets streaming from galaxy Hercules A, an object which is 2 billion light years* away.



Hercules A, the yellowy blob at centre of the image, is one BIG galaxy. For comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter and it contains about 200 billion stars. Hercules A, is roughly 1,000 times more massive than the Milky Way and has at the centre a 2.5-billion-solar-mass central black hole, which spews out the jets at near-light speed.

The jets, which are only visible to a radio telescope, are about one-and-a-half million light-years long.



* 1 light-year = the distance light travels in 1 year at 186,000 miles per second.

I can't even begin to get my head around those figures.

a lightyear is about 9480000000000000 metres, that should make it a bit clearer for you

Next time you are thinking of complaining about the weather, it could be worse - you could be in the giant hurricane over Saturn's north pole

Best not to try, I just go 'wow' these days.

Active sunspot region has produced a series of X-class (i.e. fookin BIG) flares in the past few days, luckily none in our direction. But the Sun is rotating the region towards us, so there's a good chance one may blow off with Earth's number on it. Tin hats on, please.

The power of the Sunhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22556750rl

Time for everyone to make a Faraday box

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22736709 Kept that one quiet !

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22736709 Kept that one quiet !

Do you think a Faraday Cage might help?

Not at all, the whole astro community were anticipating it (for example,rlJPL article 2 weeks earlierrl) and every available telescope and instrument that could, watched it and studied it.

They even took rla videorl

The fact is, unless it's going to be a close thing, nobody outside the astronomy community is even slightly interested. And at 15 times further away than the moon, nobody else would have given, or did give,a shhit!

If you really do want to have guaranteed advance warning (well, of those objects which are known to be coming by!) then all you have to do is follow @AsteroidWatch

Just thought some of you might be entertained by a short video illustrating comparative sizes of stars, up to the biggest known. Just a couple of minutes, but I think fascinating as well as mind boggling.

You can find it on a popular video sharing site by searching for
Star Size Comparison HD AudioV2

Been really enjoying looking up at the ISS the last few nights. Sometimes followed by the ATV4. I'm 25 but as soon as I get the update on twitter that it is about to appear I'm 4 years old again!

Quote: Robbo "Been really enjoying looking up at the ISS the last few nights. Sometimes followed by the ATV4. I'm 25 but as soon as I get the update on twitter that it is about to appear I'm 4 years old again!'" Aye, it's great to watch, tonight (but prolly cloudy ( ) the ATV is about 10 mins ahead of the ISS at roughly 23:19, in the South/ SW, rising from the west but fairly low down in the sky As ever, people can create themselves a login on the free www.heavens-above.com/ website and then get full details, individualized predictions and sky charts, at a click.

Quote: Robbo "Been really enjoying looking up at the ISS the last few nights. Sometimes followed by the ATV4. I'm 25 but as soon as I get the update on twitter that it is about to appear I'm 4 years old again!'" Aye, it's great to watch, tonight (but prolly cloudy ( ) the ATV is about 10 mins ahead of the ISS at roughly 23:19, in the South/ SW, rising from the west but fairly low down in the sky As ever, people can create themselves a login on the free www.heavens-above.com/ website and then get full details, individualized predictions and sky charts, at a click.