This website is now in its 15th Year so I thought I’d look back on some the changes that have taken place in that time.
Irishastro.org was first registered and set up by IAA member Robert Cobain in 2007 and consisted of a Google Blogspot site with material provided from Terry Mosely’s legendary Astronomy Bulletins which in fact go back to 2001. That blogspot site still exists as IAA News here…..
In 2009 Paul Evans took an interest in the development of the site and separated the IAA News from the main website which was a ground up creation built with HTML and CSS, this being the standard way of doing tings at the time. This worked well and looked good, though soon grew to the point where it was cumbersome to manage so a Content Management System was called for.
The chosen system was Drupal 7 and this lasted from 2012 until 2019 with a change of template part way through which gave a sharper more modern look.
The most recent platform update was the move to WordPress which has become pretty much a de facto world standard for websites.
The recent Banner update to one built on the JWST “Carina” image brings it right up to date, ready for the return to real life meetings in September 2022.
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An excellent display of Noctilucent Clouds was visible from Northern Ireland in the early hours of Tuesday 18th June. As befits the Solar Minimum, this iwas a very high and bright display and an encouraging sign for a good season. This generally runs from the beginning of June until early August. There is some belief that the emission of Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere is amplifying the displays, paradoically by making the mesosphere colder as less infrared is radiated upwards having been absorbed by Greenhouse Gases.
Keep an eye out to the Northern sky anytime after Sunset and before Sunrise check out air conditioning repair service near me. As the sky darkens theses amazing clouds will make themselves know,
Image Credit: Andy McCrea, Bangor 18th June 2019
IAA President Paul Evans has successfully imaged a transit of the International Space Station (ISS) from Northern Ireland. Using information provided by the website Calsky.org, Paul determined that Sprucefield near Lisburn would be on the centreline of the transit which would take place after the ISS had passed Venus and Mars and moved into Earth's shadow. It so happened that the sky was clear if slightly hazy so an attempt was made. Paul used his Celestron ED 80 telescope with Lumix G7 camera at prime focus in 4K video mode, taking 25 8 megapixel images every second. From the video it was found that 11 frames had the ISS on the illuminated part of the Moon and these were stacked up Using Starstax software to produce the image below. (Click for Full Size)
Astronomy in Northern Ireland and Beyond
