Milky Way Kiwi

04/01/2025

Happy Perihelion Day! We’re the closest we get to the Sun today - the exact moment was very early this morning, about when we were finishing up at Star Safari. So today we are 147.1 million km from the Sun and we’re travelling at 30.3 km/s around the Sun.

27/12/2024

The Parker Solar Probe just go to 6.1 million kilometres from the Sun, that’s about four Solar diameters . It’s also travelling at a blistering 692,000 km/h. Here’s the press release from Johns Hopkins APL.

NASA’s mission to “touch” the Sun has confirmed that it survived its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun’s surface on Dec. 24. Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles (around 6.1 million kilometers) above the surface of the Sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe hurtl...

13/12/2024

Perseverance has reached the rim of Jezero Crater. It’s been a long climb with a few traction issues but after 3.5 months, success!

28/10/2024

NASA has selected 9 spots for the crewed Artemis landings. They’re all in the South Pole region and were selected for their scientific value, ease of communication and terrain.

As NASA prepares for the first crewed Moon landing in more than five decades, the agency has identified an updated set of nine potential landing regions near

22/10/2024

Hari got an awesome shot of the comet on Monday night.

Here’s another one of C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan ATLAS. It’s definitely getting dimmer. Hari did some
Hill climbing to get the best horizon.

18/10/2024

Here’s our Mars Rovers exploring the hall at Ormond School yesterday.

15/10/2024

We’ve reached Solar Maximum! Though we won’t know for sure for a few years. The International Solar Cycle Prediction Panel is a team of international scientists that are sponsored by NASA and NOAA to try and unpick what the Sun is up to. They have determined that the Sun has reached its much anticipated Solar Maximum. This means we’ll continue to see lots of activity and maybe even some more Aurora for the next year or so.

In a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday, representatives from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the international Solar Cycle Prediction Panel announced that the Sun has reached its solar maximum period, which could continue for the next year.

13/10/2024

Took this on Friday night with our GoPro.

02/10/2024

From 2 to 5 October 2024, the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) is teaming up with the International Planetarium Society (IPS) to continue the legacy of 100 Hours of Astronomy and celebrate 100 Years of the Planetarium! In 1923, the first planetarium projector was invented in Jena, Germany, an...

25/09/2024

At the Aerospace Summit 2024 after a long but productive day at work.

25/09/2024

2024 a conference we looked forward to attending

2024 was a fantastic opportunity to network and learn what's new in our aerospace industry.

22/09/2024

Spaceward Bound NZ is our new page for space science programmes we run in schools and at public events. That is where we will put updates on what we are up to with our planetarium, robots, water rockets and other cool things we dream up for our space science programmes.

Welcome to Spaceward Bound NZ. This is our new page. Spaceward Bound NZ is part of Milky-Way.Kiwi Ltd and provides space science education programmes in schools and events throughout New Zealand.

21/09/2024

Carterton Space Week is from 5-11 October. There’s a bunch of amazing space related activities for the whole family from talks on astrophotography to launching water rockets and even a careers expo.

Carterton Space Week 5-11 October 2024

18/09/2024

The link is an article regarding a paper that proposes that the Earth may have had a ring of debris from an asteroid that was torn about 466 million years ago. It is based on observations of impact crater distributions and ages as well as climate fluctuations at the time. Very interesting, we look forward to any follow up
research on this.

The rings of Saturn are among the most famous and spectacular features in the solar system. Earth may once have had something similar.

12/09/2024

Congratulations to Kaikoura being designated New Zealands’d third and newest dark sky sanctuary. Fantastic work by everyone involved.

Exciting News! Kaikōura, New Zealand, has officially been designated an International Dark Sky Sanctuary! As the 22nd sanctuary globally and the third in New Zealand, this recognition celebrates the pristine night skies over Ka Whata Tu o Rakihouia Conservation Park and surrounding lands, helping to further the country’s mission to become a dark sky nation.

This milestone is a testament to years of dedicated efforts to protect both the endangered Hutton’s shearwater and the natural darkness of the Kaikōura night sky. Congratulations to all who made this possible! 🌟 🎉

To learn more about Kaikōura and their efforts to become a Dark Sky Sanctuary visit https://bit.ly/4dYFM3k

12/09/2024

The attached article from the European Southern Observatory is about astronomers using ALMA to capture detailed images of a star's surface. They saw bubbling gas motions on R Doradus. This red giant star is 180 light-years away, visually not far from the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), though at 5.44 Mag you’ll need good eyesight and no Moon to spot it. Its volume is huge, if it was in our Solar System we’d be inside it! It has a radius about 125 times more than the Sun.

Using the ALMA telescope, researchers observed giant gas bubbles, 75 times the size of the Sun. R Doradus is similar in mass to the Sun so this observation provides new insights into convection and stellar winds, offering a glimpse into the future behavior of stars like our Sun when they become red giants and roast planets like the Earth!

For the first time, astronomers have captured images of a star other than the Sun in enough detail to track the motion of bubbling gas on its surface. The images of the star, R Doradus, were obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a telescope co-owned by the European S...

07/09/2024

When nighttime light disrupts the body's natural rhythms, consequences may include a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease, a study suggests.

06/09/2024

🌑 Mercury's Bepi Colombo had the first look at a newly named crater honouring a New Zealand artist! 🎨

During a recent flyby, a special 155 km wide peak ring basin came into view—now officially named Stoddart Crater after renowned New Zealand artist Margaret Olrog Stoddart (1865–1934), famous for her stunning flower paintings. This crater was chosen by the BepiColombo mission team for its potential future scientific interest.

David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the UK’s Open University, shared, “We saw that this crater would be visible during the flyby and decided it would be worth naming.” The name was recently approved by the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature.

What an amazing way to celebrate both space exploration and New Zealand’s artistic heritage! 🌟🖼️