Astronomy@Geology-Rocks

Today I went into the lab once more and place the lunar sample into the machine – this time instead of blasting it with x-rays to get element maps I was picking out specific points to hit with an electron beam and see what they are made off. First off we picked a selection of […]

A freind of mine posted this link which is an artical/post on the Official Google blog on Twitter.  It is a vedeo showing Google Mars with an historical overlay on it showing the works of Giovanni Schiaparelli. This is to celebrate his 174th birthday – this guy observed Mars through a telescope and drew maps of […]

Today is Ada Lovelace Day and the idea is to blog about women in technology who you admire or who have inspired you. I have chosen the Cosmochemist/planetary scientist/meteoriticist Monica Grady who is currently based at the Open University but she inspired me when I met her at the natural history museum where she was […]

Friday saw me once again wending my weary way to London. This time I was going in to carbon coat my lunar meteorite thin section and put it in the machine to make X-ray maps of specific elements. I felt very nervous as I hadnt done anywhere near the amount of reading I had ment […]

I thought people might be interested in these pompom comets that I made with my scout group – the kids loved wirling them around there heads and occasionally letting go when on was ‘escaping the solar system’ or in other wards ending up hooked on on of the roof beans where it still sits quietly! […]

Tonight I went out at twilight with my husband and over the top of our village hung the most fantstic orange moon! It was being lensed by the atmosphere and so appeared absolutly huge! I was very sad not to be able to get a photo of it from both an observation point of view […]

As part of my Scouts Astronomy and Astronuatics badges I came up with a project of makeing a solar system (not to scale) that they could lay out on the floor of the village hall and make more bits off ie the moons and comets etc… http://www.salaric.co.uk/2008/07/13/the-solar-system-in-coloured-card/

Alaric took his cubs out onto the common for a second attempt at stargazing but yet again it was too cloudy. He walked them up to the top of the common and the cloud actually did start to clear but the kids were just being too restless by this point so the mission was aborted. […]

I went for lunch round my friends house today – she is a writer and tends to hang around with interesting people. The other lunch guest was just such a person and apparently belongs to a local astronomical society – he said he would email me the details and assured me its not expensive and […]