On May 9 Jupiter is at opposition. This event, which occurs every 399 days, happens when Jupiter is at its closest to the Earth and at its brightest. To the naked eye it is a brilliant white object, three times brighter than the brightest star. Features such as coloured bands and the famous great red… Continue reading Jupiter at opposition 9 May 2018
Tag: Astronomy
Astronomy Items
The Rare Earth hypothesis
Updated 15 December 2025 Ever since the pioneering work of Frank Drake (1930-2022) way back in 1960, astronomers have been looking for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilisations but all SETI searches have failed to find anything. This could be because Earth-like planets containing complex life forms (such as ourselves) are rare in the Universe and only… Continue reading The Rare Earth hypothesis
Galileo and the telescope
Revised 21 November 2025 Telescopes are instruments which use multiple lenses to produce magnified images of distant objects. It is unclear who invented the first telescope: lenses had been widely used in Europe to correct poor eyesight since the fourteenth century and I expect that, over time, the telescope was actually invented many times by… Continue reading Galileo and the telescope
20 March 2018 – the equinox
Now that we are in the month of March, it is only a short time until 21 March, the first day of spring (or first day of autumn if you're one of my readers in the southern hemisphere). There is a commonly held view that 21 March is an equinox and that the equinoxes are the two… Continue reading 20 March 2018 – the equinox
Johannes Kepler
Updated 14 December 2025 My latest post is about the work of the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). He is most famous for his improvement to the earlier model of Copernicus by introducing the idea that the planets move in elliptical, rather than circular, orbits and that their movements in these orbits are governed by… Continue reading Johannes Kepler
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