As I’m going to be away for a week, Astroengine is going to be quiet for seven days. I’m heading down to Cornwall, UK where I hope to go to Goonhilly Earth Station (on the Lizard) to try to get some more information on its shutdown. Last year I was shocked to hear that the station and its...

It’s that time of the week again, when all the space enthusiasts get together for one big party. This week, the Carnival is being held over at the Space Cynics. They may be a cynical bunch, but they’ve put on one great, enthusiastic gathering. Like a huge art gallery, they’ve looked...

Chaiten Volcano, southern Chile, erupts generating an intense electrical storm (UPI) This is quite possibly the most stunning photograph I have seen for a long, long time. In Chile, a volcano has erupted, blasting huge quantities of ash and gas into the atmosphere. As the plume of ejected material rose...

What with all the surprise activity of the Sun at solar minimum of late, I’ve found myself looking around the solar observation sites an awful lot more than I used to. During all the commotion back in 2003 when the Sun was blasting out record breaking X-ray flares one after another, I really didn’t...

In my capacity as Mars Foundation Communications Officer, I was asked to approach one of the mission scientists working with The Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The Foundation has an acute interest in CRISM as its...

In a combination of site development, domain name changes and database editing, I thought I had it all sorted out. But obviously I’d overlooked something…

One year on, the Carnival of Space has gone from strength to strength. After astroengine hosted the Carnival last week, I realized just how many diverse space blogs there were out there. I counted 30+ entries; trying to organize that huge number of blogs, whilst doing them all justice, is a hard task....