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Thanks to everyone who volunteered to help on Friday. Due to the weather we have agreed with the suburban land agency to postpone the event.

Meeting

Our meetings are now in our new home, the common room of the main building, just north of the Duffield lecture theatre. We start at… Read More »Meeting

BOOK REVIEW: Treasures of the Southern Sky

Treasures of the Southern Sky

BOOK REVIEW by Steve Crouch

Treasures of the Southern Sky by Robert Gendler, Lars Lindberg Christensen and David Malin (Published by Springer)

Given that it’s been almost 25 years since the publication of “Exploring the Southern Sky” and almost 20 years since David Malin’s “A view of the Universe”, a new coffee table book featuring the southern sky is probably long overdue. There have been many advances in imaging techniques in the last 25 years and quite a few new telescopes, including HST, which often image southern objects.Read More »BOOK REVIEW: Treasures of the Southern Sky

ET – Europa or Enceladus?

There’s been a lot of chatter in the news about Europa and the possibility of life. Europa has been the astrobiology darling for a few years – but I think that Enceladus is now the forerunner, and it’s where we should be looking next.   Why you ask? Well here’s a few reasons:

Enceladus has range of terrains from old, heavily cratered surfaces, tectonic features including scarps, troughs, grooves, ridges, and a young surface and evidence of recent tectonic activity in the southern hemisphere, less than 10 – 100 my. Plate movement is an indication of an active geology. The plume of water ice and other materials erupting to a height of >80 km from the surface of the moon at temperatures of order 70 K to 150 K provides strong evidence that Enceladus’ interior may be warm, contain a sub surface ocean and that its surface is presently tectonically active.

Approaching_Enceladus
Approaching Enceladus

Read More »ET – Europa or Enceladus?