Psychogeeks

The image to the left was taken by the adaptive optics team at the Keck Observatory during 2005. It shows a distant Kuiper Belt object known at that time as 2003 UB313, and a small companion object. Despite poetic naming not being an astronomy strong point the discoverers of 2003 UB313 [1] had unofficially nicknamed [...]

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I’m not one for the seemingly endless series of over-hyped Idol, Popstars, and X-Factor dross that passes for entertainment. However, I came across something today that really impressed me. A mobile phone salesman from Cardiff belted out a quite amazing, if a touch rough, Nessun Dorma. He even got a tear [...]

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I’ve recently been wanting to run a few simulations of solar system dynamics to generate data for animations of various phenomena. One of the most used tools for this in astronomy circles has been the SWIFT package by Hal Levison and Martin Duncan. I used a web-hosted version of SWIFT during my studies [...]

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A few weeks ago I wrote about my reasons for choosing an image of the volcanic plumes on Io as one of my banner images. The NASA New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt has captured the first movie of one of these plumes. The five images that make up the [...]

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The sixth of June is a magnificent time for those with a nascent interest in astronomy to get out and see the largest planet in our solar system. The planet is reaching opposition, making it visible all night. You don’t need any great equipment to get an experience similar to the one that Galileo [...]

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