22/10/11

Today I spotted the Andromeda galaxy in the sky. This is particularly interesting for several reasons. Firstly, it  is nearest galaxy to ours at 20 million light years away! People talk about light years all the time, but to put that into perspective, the entire galaxy could have been completely destroyed 1 million years ago, and we wouldn't see it happen for another million years. The picture we are seeing is from the same time as there were dinosaurs on the earth. At this massive distance, it is the furthest object away from earth which is visible with the naked eye. It is also interesting that our galaxy (the milky way) and Andromeda are heading towards each other and will almost defiantly collide...but don't worry, it's not for another 3 billion years. 

15/10/11

Last night, I was on a night hike with the scouts until about 2am so I had plenty of opportunity to look at the nights sky.
The most important star, considering that we were hiking was Polaris (The north star) which was very useful throughout the night. Also, Ursa Major (the big dipper) was clearly visible and I showed these both to the scouts and taught them how to find Polaris from Ursa major - you draw a line from the two stars making up the end of of the 'pan' and follow it until you reach another noticeably bright star, Polaris.

Polaris will always point north if you are in the northern hemisphere so it is important to know how to find it if you want to do expeditions or similar at night.
I think that despite the time of night, the scouts all enjoyed themselves and learnt some useful information for hiking in the future!

08/10/2011

So, typically for my first post, it was very cloudy over Bath last night so unfortunately I couldn't really see anything. I did hear, however, that there was meant to be a meteor shower last night, and found this website: http://www.meteorwatch.org/meteor-map/meteor-live-view/ which provided live updates of meteors from the impacts they make into the atmosphere and is very interesting.
Anyway, due to the cloud, this is all I have to post this week...

Welcome to my new blog

Hi,
This is my new blog, on which I will record what I see in the night sky, hopefully on a monthly basis, as part of my silver Duke of Edinburgh award
Enjoy!