A unique beer-fuelled AAS camera angle. Clockwise from top right: Pamela Gay, Fraser Cain, Chris Lintott and Ian O'Neill It’s Thursday afternoon and the hangover is finally subsiding. This morning wasn’t a nice experience, having stumbled back to the hotel at 2am, knowing very well I had...

Events are amping up at the AAS conference in Long Beach. Tonight, we were treated to the official US opening of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (plus superb live music by George Hrab, a Second Life IYA2009 ribbon-cutting and the premier of “400 Years of the Telescope“). In the...

The galactic centre in unprecidented detail from Hubble (NASA, ESA, and Q.D. Wang) Day One: Information overload! When Fraser and I turned up in Long Beach, CA yesterday for the 213th American Astronomical Society meeting, I had an overwhelming feeling that I should have done my homework before travelling...

304A SOHO/EIT image of the solar disk (NASA/ESA) Back in 2006, I was feeling a bit nostalgic about my four years of research at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth Solar Group, so I decided to try to find some high resolution prints of the Sun. After a lot of effort, I didn’t find any prints I...

The January AAS meeting is being held in Long Beach, CA (Image by Kevin Stanchfield) I’m currently organizing myself for this week’s AAS meeting down in Long Beach, so expect a feast of breaking news and information from one of the biggest astronomical conferences on the planet! Dictaphone?...

First of all, apologies for having to cancel last week’s Christmas show, but you’ll be glad to hear that today’s New Years Eve Astroengine Live is ready to go! Actually, this was going to be a recording as we were hoping to be partying in San Diego, but like all great New Years plans,...

My Facebook Universe It might seem a little egocentric, but I thought this was rather cool. After wading knee-deep in Facebook code for the last few days, I came across some nice little tools. As with 90% of Facebook apps, it is debatable as to whether they are considered “useful” or not,...

Having just stumbled around the space blogs, I was enthusiastic that I would find some inspiration toward my next Astroengine.com article. Along the way, I found this rather entertaining short film on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy website. As Phil points out, “black holes don’t work this...

Facebook Connect, a new era for social media... Facebook recently officially announced the release of Facebook Connect. At first, I was a little dubious as to what it would do; after all who needs to sign in to their Facebook account when surfing other websites, right? Actually, Facebook Connect is a...

It's sad, but the next show will be awesome... Sorry everybody, but if you’re listening in to Astroengine Live for your weekly space news updates, you’ll notice a recording is currently being re-broadcast on WPRT Radio (thank you Jack!). Due to unforeseen circumstances I am currently stuck...