Video Link Below With this video we introduce a new program feature at Astronomy for Change: “The Mystery and Wonder of Astronomy”. The true structure of spiral galaxies, as yet undetermined into the first quarter of the 20th century with Edwin Hubble, Harlow Shapley, Heber Curtis and Fritz Zwicky making great strides in determining the[…]
On 3 October of 2017, in what the prestigious Royal Swedish Academy described simply as “a discovery that shook the world”, three Americans were awarded that year’s Nobel Prize in Physics “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”, waves famously predicted by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity 105[…]
In this video, Dr. Jim Daly of Astronomy For Change discusses the early August Night Sky with some of the jewels of the Summer Sky, some of the prominent constellations, the Milky Way, the major planets visible (Jupiter & Saturn), the phases of the moon for August 10 – 13 along with the Perseid Meteor[…]
Ever since it was discovered that the rotational dynamics of spiral galaxies were inconsistent with the observed mass of those galaxies, it has been postulated that missing mass or dark matter was responsible. With fellow staff-member Kent Ford, astronomer Vera Rubin announced at a 1975 meeting of the American Astronomical Society the discovery that most stars in spiral galaxies orbit at roughly[…]
On 4 December, 2017 Dr. James Daly of Astronomy For Change hosted a public event discussing the landmark discovery and optical counterpart observation of the merger of two Neutron Stars. The discovery was made on 17 August, 2017 using the US-Based LIGO Gravity Wave Telescope Array and the Virgo gravitational wave observatory located near Pisa,[…]
In Albert Einstein‘s 1915 General Theory of Relativity, his theory on Gravity and a brand new way of looking at the universe, it was predicted that the space in the vicinity of a massive object would be warped and thus, the appearance of anything whose light would pass through this region of space would be[…]
Did you ever wonder why each of the seasons feature a unique and distinctive procession of stars and constellations? The year is divided into four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. We begin the astronomical year on the Vernal Equinox, the astronomical beginning of Spring and the date the sun, moving eastward along the Ecliptic,[…]
Update to European Southern Observatory To Announce “Unprecedented Astronomical Discovery” Monday, 16 October The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced the unprecedented discovery and observation of the optical counterpart to the gravitational wave event observed on 17 August (GW170817) of this year. The full announcement and press event can be watched here: This observation is[…]
Like early explorers mapping the continents of our globe, astronomers are busy charting the spiral structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Using infrared images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way’s elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms sweeping off the ends of a central bar of[…]
2017 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded for Gravity Wave Detection A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… This now famous opening scroll of Star Wars is a fitting and appropriate way to open this story as it describes -perfectly- the environment, origin and progenitor of these waves. Yesterday, 3 October, in what[…]
The brilliantly successful New Horizons that flew by Pluto in a spectacular reconnaissance mission on 14 July last year closes out this month with two great stories. New Horizons Spies a Kuiper Belt Companion On its way to a New Years Day 2019 rendezvous with its next port of call, 2014 MU69, New Horizons is[…]
