Society for Popular Astronomy

Yes Nigel, a 4-inch/f.5 refractor makes a good richest field 'scope. Ideal for the Orion Nebula the Perseus double-cluster and M31 in Andromeda, etc.

You might like to consider Phillips Colour Star Atlas. The maps are very attractive and give the physical types of many stars. There's also plenty of interesting text for an atlas. I wouldn't like to part with mine.

How's your 4-inch/f.5 refractor for chromatism Nigel? I have the same spec, but a Celestron. The chromatism is pretty strong on higher powers. I bought a Baader semi-apo filter to deal with it, but I reckon that it's only about 30 per cent effective. It also reduces some of the incoming light, in co...

A thousand apologies Ian for mistaking your image for a Smerral one!

A recent theory of how the ice age began challenges the theory of Milankovitch cycles, by saying that gases released by volcanic activity, dissolving rocks in mountain sutures, cooled the atmosphere. Now, a new theory complements the first by explaining how the last ice age ended. It's been known fo...

When you say "quality books", do you mean technical volumes or the more popular sort of, say, the Patrick Moore kind? The range of astronomy books is vast?

A company with sites in Bristol, Belfast and Oxfordshire, Thales Alenia Space, has done a deal with Nasa through the British Space Agency to construct a chemical refuelling station. The station will assist in transferring fuel to the Lunar Gateway space station that will orbit the moon and operate a...

The cost of the unfinished project has far outstripped the planned budget, which is why the government has cancelled it.

Gorgeous Brian, a very clean image.

After just 18 months into the project and at a cost of £64m,the Government has given up on it Global Navigation Satellite System. The project was intended to be an independent alternative to America's GPS and the EU's Galileo ( from which the U.K. is now excluded ). Now the Government is persuing th...

When we consider the age of the Earth and the great numbers of asteroids that have struck our planet, it seems strange that there are no near-earth asteroids that have gone into earth-orbit and circle us as mini-moons. Anybody any ideas about this? There has to be a reason/s why we don't see capture...

Although Orionids can be seen now, they arrive in force at the weekend, with rates at twenty or so an hour. The Orionids are swift meteors, as they meet the Earth more-or-less head on. This is in contrast to the apparently "slow" Taurids, that have to catch up with the Earth in its orbit. The Orioni...

Not a rocky moon, but what is speculated to be by asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, the discarded upper stage of the Centaur rocket that propelled NASA's Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966. A thruster failed to operate on the lander, sending Surveyor crashing into the moon. "I'm jazzed about this," s...

A fab image Ian of an object that's a great favourite among deep sky observers. We see the spiral from an interesting angle, don't you think?

The Professor received the prize for showing that the General Theory of Relativity leads to the formation of Black Holes, and that a singularity lies at the centre of a black hole, where the know laws of nature cease to exist. Einstein didn't think that black holes existed and said that Schwartzchil...