Welcome to Astronotes
Hello, I’m Colin, welcoming you to Astronotes, the Planetarium’s official blog. Here you will find the latest news and views from the fascinating worlds of astronomy and space exploration. We hope you will come here to learn what is hot and exciting, profound or even weird from worlds beyond ours . So that's the introduction out of the way, now on with the Universe!
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ESO Archive
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The Truth About Zeta Reticuli
Posted on May 9, 2013 | 3 CommentsZeta Reticuli, a dim binary system of Sun-like stars only 39.5 light years away in the little constellation of Reticulum is strangely well-known. Why is it so famous? This system... -
ALMA: Everything You Need to Know About Europe’s Giant Eye on the Sky
Posted on April 12, 2013 | No CommentsHave you ever wished you could hop into a time machine, zip back billions of years and answer one of the age old questions that have plagued mankind from the... -
Stellar Nursery NGC 6357: Image of the Month
Posted on February 21, 2013 | No CommentsA new image from the European southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) telescope reveals the glowing clouds of gas and filaments of dust surrounding hot young... -
Alpha Centauri Bb: the Planet Next Door
Posted on October 17, 2012 | 1 CommentThree years ago, across the world, audiences flocked to see James Cameron’s epic movie ‘Avatar’, the story of a crippled human who gets a chance to live a new life... -
Image of the Month: On Fire Off Orion
Posted on May 11, 2012 | No CommentsThis image of the reflection nebula Messier 78 (NGC 2068) includes the soft glow of submillimetre-wavelength (infra red) radiation from clouds of interstellar dust grains running through the nebula.Dense clouds... -
M55: A Glorious Globular!
Posted on May 9, 2012 | 1 CommentA globular cluster is made of hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars packed together in a pretty compact ball.The stars in globular clusters are old and there’s never... -
Image of the Month: The Tarantula Nebula
Posted on April 20, 2012 | No CommentsOur Image of the Month was released to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and is a striking panoramic look at a stellar nursery which is... -
The Largest Stars in the Universe
Posted on March 14, 2012 | 9 CommentsHow big is the largest known star? Compared to planets, stars will always be the overall group winners in terms of superior size. When you look at the night sky... -
What is a Nebula?
Posted on February 24, 2012 | 3 CommentsBeautiful colour images of nebulae grace astronomy books and websites and have spread to mainstream culture. They are now familar to the public but what are these gaudy celestial spectacles?... -
The Heart of the Omega Nebula: Image of the Month
Posted on January 6, 2012 | 1 CommentA new image of the Omega Nebula reveals amazing detail in a cosmic landscape of gas clouds, dust and newborn stars. Captured by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the...