From the category archives:

Earth and Beyond

Cloud Answers

February 17, 2012 Earth and Beyond

After you’ve checked out this post, I strongly recommend a visit to the Cloud Appreciation Society, they have fantastic guides for cloud viewing and a beautiful gallery you can spend hours browsing through 1. Noctilucent clouds are the highest type of cloud and one of the most beautiful. It literally means ‘night shining’ and usually they [...]

Quiz – The Cloud Edition

February 14, 2012 Earth and Beyond

Beginning of school and my head is in the clouds. What are noctilucent clouds? How do contrails form? Can you tell how much rain you will get by looking at a cloud? What is a cloud forest? And what is the photo? (Courtesy of H. Raab) Answers on Friday.

They’re out there

February 13, 2012 Earth and Beyond

Image courtesy of Luciano Mendez, a hypothetical view of moons around a giant planet in the habitable zone. Exoplanets. And if we’ve already found over 700 with just few years of looking then how many billions really exist? It’s a crowded universe. Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars. Most we have found so far [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Responsible Fire Management

February 1, 2012 Earth and Beyond

We have a bush block in central Australia, so fire management is extremely important. It’s relatively cool and raining at the moment, so it’s time to deal with last year’s growth that is this year’s fire hazard.

Star Answers

December 13, 2011 Earth and Beyond

I‘m back! Did you miss me? Turns out that when you have ‘minor surgery’ you should listen to the ‘surgery’ bit and not so much of the ‘minor.’ I’m recovering nicely, but I’m also starting the round of Christmas relative visits with children but without husband, so posts may be irregular. I do remember that [...]

Quiz – The Star Edition

December 6, 2011 Earth and Beyond

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. What is the main sequence? Will our sun die as a supernova? Why do stars twinkle? Are the stars in constellations ‘related’? And what do you know about the picture? Answers hopefully on Friday!

Wordless Wednesday – A Day

November 30, 2011 Earth and Beyond

This is something I’ve been trying to do for ages, either life gets in the way or the day is deadly boring. Most photos are half an hour apart, the evening gets closer and the last sunset shots are only a couple of minutes. For a camera set up on a tripod there’s a worrying [...]

Curiosity Found the Cat?

November 28, 2011 Earth and Beyond

NASA has successfully launched another mission to Mars with their biggest ever rover, Curiosity. Curiosity is the size of a car and the mission is the Mars Science Laboratory. Technically Curiosity is not searching for life, but it is assessing whether or not the Martian environment has been (or is?) suitable for life. The main [...]

Weather Answers

November 25, 2011 Earth and Beyond

1. La Nina means ‘the girl’ and is the companion or opposite of El Nino, the boy. The names come from South America and originally El Nino wasn’t literal – it was named because it tended to arrive at Christmas and the reference is to Christ. They are part of the Southern Oscillation climate pattern that [...]

Quiz – The Weather Edition

November 21, 2011 Earth and Beyond

I know I spoke about weather last week, but we’re in the build-up. This is a uniquely tropical season that can be a lot of fun but also an enormous pain. It’s getting hotter and stickier, the clouds are grey and the lightning is pretty. The blackouts are annoying. So we think about the weather [...]