Orbiting Frog

Comet ISON is a ball of rock and ice a few miles across that was first spotted over a year ago beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

[](http://www.ted.com/) I’m happy to announce that I am one of the 2014 TED Fellows.

[](https://media.orbitingfrog.com/uploads/wp-migrated/2013/11/pia17172fig1.jpg) This image was taken by Cassini, the amazing spacecraft that has been…

[](https://media.orbitingfrog.com/uploads/wp-migrated/2013/11/zooniverse-icon-web-black.png) We're expanding the Zooniverse team in Oxford and we're looking…

Albert Einstein was ESA’s 4th Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

Astronomers are sometimes asked to defend public funding of their work.

[](https://media.orbitingfrog.com/uploads/2026/02/1771788069116-ry0pri.png) We recently posted news of a Planet Hunters planet…

[](http://www.unawe.org/resources/posters/citizen-science-astro/) This is a poster from CAP2013, which am attending in Warsaw.

The .Astronomy 5 Unphoto - Credit: Demitri Muna As the fifth .Astronomy came to a close on Wednesday, I felt as I always do at the end of these meetings:…

Don't worry I'm not about to start a reality show.

During the Perseid meteor shower, I blogged a video of a bright meteor taken by astrophotographer Mel Gigg.

Solid, liquid, gas.

Here's a really simple and fun experiment to do at home: make glowing jelly (or jello, American friends)!

I've just hit 'publish' on the latest episode of Recycled Electrons, my (almost) weekly podcast with friend and Zooniverse colleague Chris Lintott.

I have given a lot of talks over the past few years and I've seen more than I can count.

[](https://media.orbitingfrog.com/uploads/2026/02/1771788062956-htd96o.jpg) ALMA's view of Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47.

Tonight (and last night too) have been your best chance to see this year's Perseid meteor shower.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy orbiting around our own Milky Way.

Once you have a Meade ETX-90 Telescope aligned and ready to go (no small feat, at times) you can see some pretty cool objects in the Summer sky.

In a word: this.

[](https://media.orbitingfrog.com/uploads/2026/02/1771788072510-yz6163.jpg) NASA have released the raw version of Friday's #WaveAtSaturn photograph of the…

Smile for the camera... in space!

For better or worse citizen science has become a fashionable term, but what is it and why do people like it?

Plants aren't something I know very much about, but I remember the concept of turgor pressure from my GCSEs.

A new journal begins today, Astronomy and Computing, covering the intersection of astronomy, computer science and information technology.

The periodic mention of a 'supermoon' in the news cycle is starting to annoy me.

[](https://media.orbitingfrog.com/uploads/wp-migrated/2013/06/screen-shot-2013-06-17-at-21-25-11.png)It doesn't matter what it is: today this was progress.

[](https://media.orbitingfrog.com/uploads/wp-migrated/2013/06/m45-pleiades-jack-newton.jpg) Image Credit: Jack Newton There's a cool paper on arXiv today in…

The response my previous blog post about gender bias took me by surprise.

We’re running the fifth .Astronomy conference later this year in Boston. .Astronomy is a small (and awesome) conference for astronomers, where you must apply…

A recent APOD featured this beautiful video of the Northern Lights over Norway.

ESA’s Planck mission reported results today showing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB, see below) in greater detail than ever before.

[](http://www.zooteach.org) I was at RAL today, as part of a teacher training event run by the National Space Academy, to talk about the Zooniverse and how our…

I thought it would be fun to ask Twitter what space fact they would tell kids aged 7. Today I spoke to a class of young children about the Solar System and…

During our Stargazing Oxford event on January 12th we had three sets of mini-lectures.

This article from the British Science Association explains why Citizen Science should be fantastic for classrooms, but also why some projects just don’t click…

We’re very pleased to present the Unproceedings of the Fourth .Astronomy Conference (.Astronomy 4), which was held in Heidelberg, Germany, July 9-11 2012.

Not just an interesting #paper but also an exercise in #opensciene - great job!

Join us at the Physics Department on Keble Road, near St.

Tonight is the start of the 2013 round of the wonderful BBC Stargazing Live. three nights of primetime astronomy programmes, hosted live from the iconic…

On Saturday, New York astronomy geeks will convene at the offices of bit.ly for the first .Astronomy Hack Day!

Last week we launched a brand new Zooniverse site: The Andromeda Project.

New Recycled Electrons episode up now: All Hail Sir Patrick Moore .

New direct image of a massive planet around another star (arXiv 1211.3744)

Over on this link, you’ll find a data-driven document (D3 FTW!)

A couple of weeks ago I began to geocode the database of astronomical research I scraped from NASA ADS during .Astronomy 4.

I (or rather my computer) spent most of this morning geocoding the database of astronomical papers that I scraped from NASA ADS a while back.

Highlights from this years’ Ig Nobel Awards for achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think: MEDICINE PRIZE: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and…

Mars Panorama - Curiosity rover in New Mexico You really have to go fullscreen!

I always feel very strange when the death of a person I never met deeply affects me.