by Colin Stuart | May 17, 2017 | Astronomy, Explainer
The day may be 24 hours long now, but that hasn’t always been the case. Nor will it be the case in the far future. The Earth’s rotation is slowing under the gravitational influence of the Moon. Billions of years ago, the day was just 18 hours long. The Moon and the...
by Colin Stuart | Feb 5, 2015 | Astronomy news, Uncategorised
Unlike our Moon, which is about one quarter the size of Earth, Phobos, the largest of Mars’s two moons is tiny – just 25 kilometres across. That makes it smaller than London. In this new image, released from The Mars Orbiter, Phobos is seen passing in...
by Colin Stuart | Jan 27, 2015 | Astronomy news, Uncategorised
NASA has released new data from yesterday’s cosmic fly-past when asteroid 2004 BL86 zoomed past the Earth at a slightly greater distance than our Moon. Those observations appear to reveal the asteroid has a moon of its own. The main asteroid is 325 metres across...
by Colin Stuart | Jan 14, 2015 | Astronomy news, Uncategorised
I was blown away yesterday when I discovered that China’s Chang’e 3 lunar mission has recently snapped this image of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) from the surface of the Moon. Taken through the lander’s Lunar Ultraviolet Telescope (LUT) on December 2,...
