AstroPioneer

Here are some of the astronomical and stargazing highlights for July to September 2024. This covers both large and small night sky events that is possible to calculate in advance!

Its not a joke you can see the farside of the Moon, while the moon appears to always show one side of it to us, that isn't actually true. You can use your location of the Earth and some knowledge about the most favourable lunar libration times, to observe around the horizon of the moon. We calculate these times for you and put them in our quarterly astronomy almanac . The almanac covers the astronomical events that we are able to calculate in advance, due to the known orbits of the planets and moons in the solar system.  Occasionally multiple librations can occur on the same day, this is a great time to see a much larger section of the Moon's horizon. One of the important things to realize when using the almanac is the where the compass directions are in relation to the surface of the moon. Because this may not be what you would expect and may cause you to look at the wrong section of the moon after reading about when the next libration will occur! Use the image to the right to

Here are some of the astronomical and stargazing highlights for April to June 2024. This covers both large and small night sky events that is possible to calculate in advance!

I am planning to travel to Northern Iceland this year in late October, early November to see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Little did I know that I would be capturing Aurora in London! I got the notification two hours before they were due to arrive, and unlike something like the IIS you can't really plan for it, but luckily I have a go bag for astronomical emergencies. I quickly decided I wanted to capture the whole thing on camera determined to create a complete video of the event. The Aurora itself was powerful with reds being seen as high as the celestial pole and a full array of colors from the common reds and less common greens to even a hint of blue, being able to see all of the colors so far down must have meant there was a powerful solar storm going on in space. The event lasted about two hours in total on the night of the 10th of May 2024, and really got started when white streaks suddenly seemed to shoot along the sky from the horizon towards the celestial pol

On a pleasant late April evening I went to see Chris Lintott at the Queen's House Greenwich as part of the Flamsteed Astronomical Society. There Chris was doing a talk focused around his new book Our Accidental Universe. So I thought I would leave a quick review of both the talk and the book.

There seems to be some exciting news about the upcoming Andromedids Meteor Outburst due for December 5th between 9 to 12 p.m UTC.