Re-sharing some of the wonderful solar eclipse images posted to the community section of my Facebook page today.
Thank you so much for sharing and joining the marathon livestream earlier today, which had a reach of over a quarter of a million on Facebook.
Inverness turned out to be one of the best places to see today’s partial solar eclipse.
You can watch the livestream again here: https://fb.watch/61U_F2KS9d/
Amazing visualisation of a star captured and ripped apart by the immense gravitational well of a Black Hole.
As the outer atmosphere of the star is accelerated by the black hole’s gravity much of it reaches escape velocity and is strewn into space, while some becomes trapped in a highly eccentric orbit. Stellar material reaching the event horizon closer to the back hole is super heated by frictional heating and turbulent flow, generating a bright accretion disk.
Meanwhile jets of concentrated electromagnetic radiation and ionised particles are blasted deep into space along the axis of rotation – a so called astrophysical jet. This transfer of kinetic energy means the black hole system is slowly loosing angular momentum over time.
I often think the universe at this scale is like witnessing a vast machine running on the conservational of energy. A wonderful illustration of the exchange of gravitational potential, angular kinetic, linear kinetic, heat and mass energy.
All energy was created at the big bang singularity and all physical processes from star birth, star death, black holes and even organic human life is the transfer and redistribution of this original energy state.
Video credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab
Join me live to *fingers crossed* observe a partial solar eclipse of the Sun. Weather permitting, I’ll be streaming views live via telescope and hosting some interactive chat and Q&A.
Rough eclipse times on June 10th:
Start: 10.08am
Maximum eclipse: 11.20am
End: 12.34 noon
You can join the stream from around 10.30am on my Facebook page here.
Safety: Please remember to never observe the Sun without proper eye protection. Solar glasses are needed to observe naked eye and proper objective mounted filters or projection should be used to observe it in binoculars or telescope.
Night Shining Clouds
I hope you enjoy this video podcast on Noctilucent Clouds – a wonderful summer phenomena you can see late at night or in the wee hours of the morning.
Joining me to discuss once again is Steve Owens, astronomer at Glasgow Science Centre and author of Stargazing For Dummies.
The video includes many community photographs shared to my Facebook page.
My thanks to:
Kevin Williamson, Emma Rennie, Chris Cogan, Louise Carle, Eric Walker, Dave Davidson, Gwen Tynan, Al Sutherland and Michelle Cummings.
Congratulations to Prof. Catherine Heymans, who’s been appointed Scotland’s 11th Astronomer Royal.
She replaces John Brown who sadly passed away in 2019.
An expert on dark energy and dark matter, Catherine is also director of the German Centre for Cosmological Lensing at Ruhr-University Bochum.
One of Catherine’s most exciting early initiatives in the role will be to install telescopes in all of Scotland’s remote outdoor learning centres, that are visited by school pupils.
She’s passionate about the cathartic experience of live observing, and how this can drive a lifelong passion for science:
“I don’t think anyone forgets the first time they saw the rings of Saturn through a telescope, but too many people never have the chance.“
“My hope is that once that spark and connection with the universe is made, children will carry that excitement home with them and develop a life-long passion for astronomy or, even better, science as a whole,”.
I couldn’t agree more.
The position of Astronomer Royal for Scotland was created in 1834 and originally held by the director of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, said: “The Astronomer Royal for Scotland has always been a distinguished and respected astronomer, and Professor Heymans is exactly that.”
Mark your diaries for a partial Solar Eclipse on the morning of 10th June 2021 (beginning 10am), visible from many parts of northern Europe.
In the north of Scotland up to 32% of the Sun’s disk will be occulted by the Moon, dropping to 25% in the south of England.
I’ll hopefully be live streaming views of the eclipse from my facebook page so look out for the event links going up soon as well as guides for viewing it safely.
I hope you enjoy this short video about the planet Mercury, which you can currently see during late evening, low on the NW horizon. Mercury is also approaching its maximum evening elongation on the 17th May.
Joining me once again is Steve Owens, astronomer at Glasgow Science Centre and author of Stargazing For Dummies.
In this video podcast we discuss:
1. Tips for observing Mercury safely.
2. Mercury’s phases.
3. The surface geology of Mercury and how this reveals tantalising hints about its history and formation.
