Bellatrix Orionis

I have to admit to being a huge fan of Twitter.  I’ve found it a great way to connect with individuals from around the globe who have the same hobby (ok, obsession would be a better word) as me.  Twitter has enabled me to renew my love of astronomy, share my frustration of the British weather and also communicate with other people who appreciate a beautiful star filled night.  One of those people is Adrian West (@AdrianWest) who belongs to Newbury Astronomy Society (@NewburyAS) and often can be found tweeting as both, though sometimes Nic Fleet (@nicfleet) takes over tweet duty.  By using Twitter many amateur and some professional observers shared their images and views of the Perseid Meteor Shower during August and by using  Twitter information was shared quickly with a whole host of people, some who had never seen a meteor shower before.

Well they are doing it again, this time we get a #moonwatch and a #meteorwatch.  The Moonwatch is taking place on the 26 and 27 October and they will be joined by the Faulkes Telescope, so there should be some pretty amazing images shared over Twitter. Check out the trailer below, lovingly created by my friend Adrian West and get yourself on Twitter, we’re an amazingly friendly bunch with a love of all things astronomical and there’s always someone to chat to about life, the universe and everything.

Trailer produced by Adrian West

I was lucky enough to be invited to a talk by Dr Chris Lintott hosted by Eddington Astronomical Society on Friday evening 

It was an excellent talk mainly about the Galaxy Zoo project and the data that had been analysed with the help of hundreds of amateur astronomers.

Check out the details on Cumbrian Sky’s website.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft sent back this image of Jupiter’s moon Europa which shows the surface crust is made up of blocks.  It’s thought tat the blocks have broken apart and drifted into new positions. This is considered the best geological evidence so far that Europa has had a subsurface ocean at some point in it’s past history.

This data and the fact that Europa has a magnetic field has lead scientists to believe an ocean is most likely present today.

In this false color image, reddish-brown areas represent non-ice material resulting from geologic activity.  White areas are material ejected during the formation of the Pwyll impact crater.  Whilst icy plains are shown in blue tones to distinguish possibly coarse-grained ice (dark blue) from fine-grained ice (light blue).  Long, dark lines are ridges and fractures in the crust, some of which are more than 1,850 miles long.

On the 26 April 1920 a debate took place between two American astronomers, Heber Curtis and Harlow Shapley.  Curtis argued that fuzzy patches in the night sky called ’spiral nabulae’ are separate galaxies or ‘island universes’, lying far away from us.  Curtis claimed that our own galaxy was less than 30,000 lightyears wide, with the Sun located near the centre.  Shapley agued that the spiral nebulae were merely nearby gas clouds inside the Milky Way.  He also claimed the Universe was composed of only one big galaxy more than 300,000 lightyears wide, with the Sun lying far away from the galactic centre.

The debate was resolved in the mid 1920’s by Edwin Hubbles work which involved pinpointing Cephid Variables in M31 (a spiral nebula).  His work showed that the distance to M31 is much greater than Shapley had imagined as M31 is indeed an ‘island universe’ now better known as the Andromeda Galaxy.

It’s now known that Curtis was right about other galaxies existing, whilst Shapley’s idea about the location of the Sun was better.  Both astronomers were wrong about the size of the Milky Way.  Astronomers current predictions have our galaxy at approx 100,000 lightyears wide.

Galileo Galilei was born on 15 February 1564. He was one of the first people to observe sunspots using a telescope.