Well, I saw it! It was cloudy at low altitudes, so I was glad I’d joined the bus going up to Pico de La Cruz with a group of about 16 people from Astrofest. Since buses get a lot more expensive after midnight, the organiser was persuaded to have the bus drop us off shortly after 11 pm, so it would be “home” by midnight, even though it meant a…
The Canarian Tourist Board will be live streaming tonight’s lunar eclipse at http://www.thebestclimateintheworld.com/geminidas Just to remind you, the moon is at almost its closest approach to the Earth, so it’s will be a supermoon – noticeably bigger than usual. There are two parts to the Earth’s shadow: the penumbra is the outer part, and the umbra is the much darker inner part. Penumbral Eclipse begins 28 Sep, 00:11:47 The penumbral…
When I heard that the road outside our house was going to be closed for a go-kart race, I was picturing loads of very noisy karts snarling past. Frankly, I was congratulating myself that it was due to finish at 7pm. One year the regular rally went on until midnight, and the noise drove me crazy. But this was great – motorless karts rolling down the hill, some cheap and…
Happy 30th birthday to the Observatory at the Roque de Los Muchachos! The official inauguration was in 1985, attended by the royalty from Denmark, Holland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and heads of state of Germany and Ireland. At that time there were only six telescopes on La Palma; now there are 17 of them. To celebrate, the Canarian Astrophysics Institute has a free exhibition in Santa Cruz…
I was preparing a non-fiction query, and one of my writing friends said I ought to include my Amazon author page. So I went to get the link and realised that it was ridiculously out of date. So that was the next half hour or so taken care of while I updated it. In the process, I got a lovely surprise. I finally have some reviews. There’s one for “The…
In the early hours of September 28th there will be a particularly spectacular lunar eclipse when the moon will be 10% closer to the Earth and larger than usual – a super moon, in fact. A lunar eclipse happens when the Sun, Earth and Moon are in a straight line, so that the moon passes through the Earth’s shadow. If you were standing on the moon when this happened, you’d…