These are some of my cosmology posts
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Schiaparelli’s landing on Mars
Update 7 February 2026 Sadly the Schiaparelli Spacecraft failed to land successfully on Mars. It hit the ground at 300 km/h and would have been destroyed on impact. The post below was published on 13 October 2016, six days before the failed landing. On 14 March 2016 the European Space Agency used facilities at Baikonur…
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The Three Phases of Twilight Explained
Updated 10 January 2026 Watching the Sun set below the horizon and the sky gradually get darker and darker is an almost magical experience. Twilight is that time of the day, just after sunset, or just before sunrise when the Sun is below the horizon but the sky is not completely dark. It is valued by…
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How the Cosmic Microwave Background Changed Our Understanding of the Universe
Updated 4 February 2026 As The accidental discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by Penzias and Wilson in 1964 proved to be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the early twentieth century and since then has made a huge contribution to our understanding of the Universe. One of the first things it achieved…
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The Discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Revised 1 February 2026 In 1964 two young American radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, made an accidental finding which would win them both the Nobel prize and turned out to be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. The story started when Penzias and Wilson were given observing time on a large radio telescope at…
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The Perseids
For revised post containing more tips on how to view the Perseids see The Perseids 2021. On 12 August you may be lucky enough – if it’s a clear night and you are somewhere without too much light pollution – to see a phenomenon called the Perseids, which is a meteor shower which appears at…
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July 8 2011- The Final Mission
On 8 July 2011 Atlantis took off for the final 13 day mission of the Space Shuttle programme and it remains to this day the last American spacecraft to carry humans into orbit. The landing of Atlantis on 21 July 2011, which brought the Space Shuttle programme to a close – Image from NASA. Development of…
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Mission Juno
On 4 July 2016 the NASA spacecraft Juno will arrive at Jupiter after a 5 year journey. It will be the ninth space probe to visit the planet. The first was Pioneer 10, which flew past in December 1973, (see notes). Juno will go into an orbit around the planet which will take it close to its poles.…
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June 20- The Solstice
The June solstice will fall on June 20 or June 21 this year, depending on where you are in the world. It is the longest day in the northern hemisphere and the day when the Sun is at its highest in the midday sky (see note). The origin of the word solstice is from the Latin words sol,…
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Spaceport UK?
I was very pleased to hear a couple of weeks ago that the UK government plans to introduce a piece of legislation called the Modern Transport Bill. This may not sound very exciting, but behind the uninspiring name is the intention to ultimately establish the UK’s first commercial spaceports, from which space tourists as well as scientists…
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Giving Venus an artificial magnetic field
As discussed in a previous post, in the far future humanity may decide to terraform Venus so that the planet has a similar temperature and atmosphere to that which currently exists on the Earth. However, the lack of a global magnetic field would cause significant obstacles to humans settling on Venus. Without this protective shield inhabitants would be exposed to the…
Explaining Science 