Welcome to Astronotes
Hello, IòÀÙm Colin, welcoming you to Astronotes, the PlanetariumòÀÙs official blog. Here you will find the latest news and views from the fascinating worlds of astronomy and space exploration. We hope you will come here to learn what is hot and exciting, profound or even weird from worlds beyond ours . So that's the introduction out of the way, now on with the Universe!-
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Exoplanets Archive
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Kepler-10c: the First Mega-Earth
Posted on June 4, 2014 | 1 CommentOnce we believed we lived in an absolutely typical planetary system. Around the Sun, small rocky planets huddle close in taking months or years to complete an orbit while huge […] -
Exoplanets Glossary
Posted on September 27, 2013 | 5 CommentsThe discovery of new planets beyond our Solar System has further expanded on what we thought we knew about what is out there. These distant extrasolar planets or exoplanets have […] -
The Blue Planet
Posted on August 30, 2013 | 1 CommentòÀÜMars is red, Earth is Blue, WeòÀÙve discovered lots of new worlds, And one of them is blue too!òÀÝ So IòÀÙm not a poet and I definitely know it! Nevertheless, […] -
Alpha Centauri Bb: the Planet Next Door
Posted on October 17, 2012 | 3 CommentsAudiences flocked to see James CameronòÀÙs ˆàepic movie Avatar, the story of a disabled human who gets a chance to live a new life as a 3m tall blue-skinned humanoid […] -
Too Close for Comfort
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsThe hunt for planets located outside of our own Solar System is not a new concept.Since 1995 scientists and astronomers have been aware of these distant worlds orbiting their host […] -
Have we found an alien Earth?
Posted on September 15, 2011 | 2 CommentsA team of astronomers based at the European Southern Observatory have announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. ˆàThis is the largest number of such […] -
Eight Record-breaking Exoplanets
Posted on July 20, 2011 | 5 CommentsOnce exoplanets, worlds orbiting other stars, were the stuff of science fiction but now we know of literally hundreds of real alien planets circling other stars. Astronomers can infer and […] -
Kepler-11: a strange and crowded planetary system
Posted on February 3, 2011 | No CommentsKepler-11 is an amazing, newly-discovered system of exoplanets. About 2000 light years from Earth, six planets orbit a star like our Sun. Each planet is bigger and more massive than […] -
“An unnatural interest in astronomy”
Posted on January 21, 2011 | No CommentsDon Pollacco, a research astronomer at Queens University Belfast, came to Armagh Planetarium to give a fascinating talk on exoplanets in January 2011. Afterwards Dr Pollaco kindly chatted to me […]