I really enjoyed tonight's total eclipse of the Moon. It was a warm and clear night, perfect for moongazing. I had both the binoculars and the 4.5" reflector telescope out, but I think the latter needs a good clean as the binoculars provided the superior view.

Watching the shadow of the Earth creep across the Moon gives you an appreciation of their relative sizes. During a total solar eclipse the Moon just covers the Sun (it's remarkable!). However, the Earth's shadow easily covers the Moon with plenty to spare.

When the shadow had almost entirely covered the Moon it was like looking at red Mars with a bright white ice cap. The red darkened greatly as the shadow obscured all Sun. It also reduced the glare in the sky. As I gazed around other areas of the sky with the binoculars I could see two of Jupiter's own moons, the smudges of nebulae and the many bright pinpricks of light from the young stars in their birthing regions. The whole sky tells a wonderful, epic story and after studying astronomy I can read it a lot better now.

After what seemed like a very long time the Moon started to brighten once more and the red retreated, as if a sunrise on the Moon. 

Tonight's sky was amazingly dark and clear for Sydney so I brought out the binoculars, and just looked up. There was Jupiter in Scorpius, near red giant Antares. I saw nebulae and groups of bright young stars against a Milky Way still faint from city lights.

It is so easy to forget that the universe is full of so many wonders when you are enclosed by a city that tries its best to hide the night sky.

The Japanese Hinode Solar-B space telescope (also here) has provided some fantastic high resolution images and movies of solar weather. A Reuters video provides an introduction to the videos and interviews with the scientists. My report on the Impact of Solar Weather (pdf) describes how solar prominences and sunspots are produced and how solar weather may affect the Earth.

When most people think of radio astronomy, they think of an individual dish antenna, such as the Parkes radio telescope seen in the movie The Dish. However, the radio astronomy world is abuzz with talk of huge projects involving hundreds of individual antennas combined together, with the billion dollar Square Kilometer Array as the ultimate example. Yet, single-dish telescopes have, and continue to, play a vital role in radio astronomy. This essay will compares the strengths of single-dish telescopes to interferometers and take a look at theresearch which is performed using these tools.

SingleDishTelescopes.pdf (151KB)

The nature of the large high velocity clouds of neutral hydrogen gas observed around our galaxy remains as one of the more enigmatic phenomena in our skies. Some have suggested that these "HVCs" are the building blocks of galaxies, while others believe that they are formed by tidal interactions between the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds.

I present a summary of the different theories on the origins of HVCs in the document below. I wrote this essay while on holiday in Europe, squeezing in writing sessions late at night after busy days exploring the sights with most of my research performed during the 10 flight from Seoul to Amsterdam.

HighVelocityClouds.pdf (107 KB)

What will the Earth look like in four billion years time? Will life be possible or will the planet be vapourised by an expanding Sun. One thing is certain, the Earth will be a very different planet to the one with live on today. In the attached essay (PDF) I discuss the future for Earth and its lifeforms over the next four billion years.

4 Billion Years AD (PDF, 200KB)

We are familiar with the daily weather forecasts on Earth, but rarely do we hear predictions for the Sun's weather on the nightly news. Yet, without the energy from the Sun there would be no weather on our planet. Giant magnetic storms fling out arches of gas and plasma that are larger than the Earth and contain far more energy than all the atomic bombs on our planet, threatening astronauts and satellites and lighting up the night sky. In the attached essay (PDF format) I explain the causes of the Sun's weather phenomena and explore the impact that they have on the Earth.

The Impact of Solar Weather (pdf, 418KB)