This is Mark's page for adding in-depth articles to include in the newsletter.

  • Halloween Tales
    (25/Oct/2015)
    Ah, mid autumn, the ‘witching season’, a time in the year most associated with ghoulish revelry, the tragic and the macabre.  Not surprisingly the autumnal night sky plays host to a reflection of such ‘unearthly goings on’, manifest as tales associated with the stars and constellations.  So, are...
  • The Square and the Andromeda Galaxy
    (25/Sep/2015)
    The Square: One of the chief constellations of the autumn night sky is the group of Pegasus. The main body of this constellation, known as the ‘Square of Pegasus’ can be utilised as a ‘signpost’ for locating constellations and leading stars arranged in the south and eastern aspects of the sky......
  • The Celestial Ocean: the River of Light
    (31/Aug/2015)
    September is a great month for observing the night sky. Conditions are (or should be) relatively mild, darkness falls reasonably early and there are plenty of objects to seek out. September is also the best month to fully appreciate one particular feature of the heavens, the ghostly river of light...
  • New Horizons: a three minute Wonder!
    (31/Jul/2015)
    Wow, what a success story New Horizons has been so far, rewriting the text books on Pluto, and providing a wealth of insightful data on the likely makeup of other Kuiper belt objects, and the vast majority of data is still to be beamed back. It could have been a very different story, as barely a...
  • New Horizons: Almost there!
    (30/Jun/2015)
    After 9 years and billions of miles travelling, NASA’s New Horizons probe finally reaches Pluto in July. The mission goal is to understand the formation of the Pluto system, the Kuiper Belt, and the transformation of the early Solar System. The spacecraft will study the atmospheres, surfaces,...
  • Trip the Light Fantastic
    (30/Jun/2015)
    Mark explains light years and the mind-boggling distances they describe. The term ‘light year’ is often used to describe a stars distance, but is it a measurement of time, or distance?  The answer to this could be ‘yes’ and ‘yes’, for there is a case that it applies to both. Certainly, a light year...
  • The Magnitude Of It All!
    (29/May/2015)
    Line-up every star in the sky at given distance and you will have a direct comparison of their brightness, which we call "Absolute Magnitude".  The result is often very different from the brightness we observe with the stars scattered throughout the galaxy (their "Apparent Magnitude").  In this...
  • Twilight and Shadow
    (30/Apr/2015)
    As nights become ever lighter, now may be a good opportunity to briefly explain why the changes in light levels encountered daily after sunset or before sunrise occur. If you were to step outside in autumn, winter or early spring, skies are fully darkened by around 21:00h. This deepest level of...
  • The Heavenly 'G'
    (31/Jan/2015)
    In this month's In-Focus article, Mark Dawson takes a tour of the "Heavenly G", which links bright stars in the southern winter sky. Stellar evolution is regarded as one of the fundamental processes involved in the building of the universe we see around us today. Just as someone who studies the...
  • Winter Open Clusters (Part 1)
    (30/Dec/2014)
    One of the many delights of observing the Winter night sky is noting the diverse range of Open Clusters visible to the naked eye, binoculars and telescope alike.  But what is an Open Cluster? Open Clusters: clusters of young stars (usually no older than 500 million yrs) of roughly the same age,...

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