Welcome to Astronotes
Hello, IтАЩm Colin, welcoming you to Astronotes, the PlanetariumтАЩs 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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Latest Headlines
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What is light?
Posted on October 1, 2010 | 4 CommentsWhat is light? Here’s an easy introduction to the electromagnetic spectrum all the way from radio waves to gamma rays. Before the modern era of technological astronomy, to know anything […] -
Dark matter and dark energy: the deepest mysteries in astronomy
Posted on October 1, 2010 | 2 CommentsIn, say 1975, there was only one kind of ‘stuff’ in the Universe, matter made of protons and neutrons. By 1985 there was a consensus that this was not enough, […] -
Elliptical galaxies: everything you need to know
Posted on October 1, 2010 | No CommentsWe all love bright and showy spiral galaxies! So much so, that we tend to overlook the elliptical galaxies which make up about 30% of the galaxies out there. Smaller […] -
What would you see flying through a nebula?
Posted on October 1, 2010 | 2 CommentsIt is difficult to look at this Hubble Space Telescope image of the nebula NGC 2467 without thinking about what it would be like to fly through it. It is […] -
Why is this nebula so shocking pink?
Posted on October 1, 2010 | 1 CommentThis fluffy pink blob is the star-forming region LHA-120-N 11 in the Large Magellanic Cloud some 170 000 light years from the Sun. N 11 (occasionally called the Bean Nebula) […] -
Hubble shows us a spectacular star cluster
Posted on October 1, 2010 | No CommentsImagine that once the Sun sets, rather than a dark sky sprinkled with a few thousand dim stars, we had a sky blazing with ten thousand or so stars blazing […] -
How you can leave your name on other worlds!
Posted on October 1, 2010 | No CommentsI’d like to tell you that I’m on the surface of an asteroid called Itokawa. I travelled there on a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency mission called Hayabusa and was left […] -
Hooray for Hayabusa: Japan’s asteroid pioneer
Posted on October 1, 2010 | No CommentsThe team at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency deserve congratulations for the amazing (and hopefully record-breaking) Hayabusa mission to asteroid 25143 Itokawa. Launched in 2003 (the spacecraft was called MUSES-C […] -
About Colin Johnston
Posted on September 28, 2010 | 1 CommentWho am I? I’m Colin Johnston, Armagh Planetarium’s Science Education Director. How did I get here? “According to their biographies, DestinyтАЩs favoured children usually had their lives planned out from […] -
About Armagh Planetarium Astronotes
Posted on September 28, 2010 | No CommentsArmagh Planetarium is the oldest functioning planetarium in the UK. Sited in the historic city of Armagh, our mission is “To advance and promote the knowledge and understanding of astronomy […]