u/astromattwoods

It's definitely worth stepping outside for a moment and checking out the conjunction of the moon and Venus tonight!

A Moon-planetary conjunction is an optical illusion where the Moon and the planet(s) look very close together in the night sky even though they are millions of kilometres away from each other.

They happen every month with the ones for Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn being quite prominent due to the brightness of the planet as well.

The closeness does vary due to where the moon is in its elliptical orbit around the earth and where the planets are in their elliptical orbit around the sun. You can have in rare occasions, the Moon passes in front of a planet. This is called an Occultation.

Hey Folks.

At around 6.40 pm on Tuesday, August 11, the International Space Station will make an extremely bright pass over Perth, reaching magnitude –3.7.

It will start out as a bright, steadily moving dot in the sky, then grow brighter and brighter as it crosses overhead. At its brightest, it’ll be pretty hard to miss.

Then, it’ll begin to fade as the ISS flies into Earth’s shadow and disappears from view. No warp drive involved. Probably.

Perth’s weather forecast for Tuesday evening is looking great, so fingers crossed for clear skies!

To use the attached maps, face south and hold the map above your head. The path on the map will then match the ISS’s journey across the sky.

You can also download the Heavens-Above app on Android phones and Spot the Station on iPhones

I'd recommend setting an alarm for 6.35 pm, then heading outside a few minutes early to give your eyes a chance to adjust to the dark and get ready to look up!

Good hunting!!!

Hey Folks.

At around 6.40 pm on Tuesday, August 11, the International Space Station will make an extremely bright pass over Perth, reaching magnitude –3.7.

It will start out as a bright, steadily moving dot in the sky, then grow brighter and brighter as it crosses overhead. At its brightest, it’ll be pretty hard to miss!

Then, it’ll begin to fade as the ISS flies into Earth’s shadow and disappears from view. No warp drive involved. Probably.

Perth’s weather forecast for Tuesday evening is looking great, so fingers crossed for clear skies!

To use the attached maps, face south and hold the map above your head. The path on the map will then match the ISS’s journey across the sky.

You can also download the Heavens-Above app on Android phones and Spot the Station on iPhones

I'd recommend setting an alarm for 6.35 pm, then heading outside a few minutes early to give your eyes a chance to adjust to the dark and get ready to look up!

Good hunting!!!

Just a heads up, folks!

If you want to get out into nature and relax, the Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower will reach its peak around July 30–31. This year we should get to 5–10 meteors an hour under dark, clear skies, due to the Moon in the sky. It's best to take a drive to a rest stop in the Central Wheatbelt to see it.

They're good to see as they frequently leave glowing trails that linger in the sky for a second or two after the meteor has vanished. It's best to watch them after midnight until dawn. This allows for the constellation Aquarius to climb higher into the sky. You don't need a telescope or binoculars. Find a safe, dark location away from city lights, and allow your eyes about 20 minutes to adjust to the darkness.

Every meteor you see is a tiny piece of cosmic dust, often no bigger than a grain of sand, burning up in Earth's atmosphere at incredible speeds. The dust responsible for the Delta Aquariids was left behind by Comet 96P/Machholz

Hopefully you'll rug up, grab a hot chocolate, head somewhere dark and spend some time under the stars.

Good Hunting :)

Just a heads up, folks!

If you want to get out into nature and relax, the Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower will reach its peak around July 30–31. This year we should get to 5–10 meteors an hour under dark, clear skies, due to the Moon in the sky. It's best to take a drive to a rest stop in the Central Wheatbelt to see it.

They're good to see as they frequently leave glowing trails that linger in the sky for a second or two after the meteor has vanished. It's best to watch them after midnight until dawn. This allows for the constellation Aquarius to climb higher into the sky. You don't need a telescope or binoculars. Find a safe, dark location away from city lights, and allow your eyes about 20 minutes to adjust to the darkness.

Every meteor you see is a tiny piece of cosmic dust, often no bigger than a grain of sand, burning up in Earth's atmosphere at incredible speeds. The dust responsible for the Delta Aquariids was left behind by Comet 96P/Machholz

Hopefully you'll rug up, grab a hot chocolate, head somewhere dark and spend some time under the stars.

Good Hunting :)

UPDATE: Pushed back to 2:35 pm!

Hey, Folks.

If you're free around 2:20 pm AWST, I'll be joining 6PR's The Long Lunch with Tod Johnston, and we'll chat about how NASA is attempting something that's never been done before: rescuing a space telescope that's slowly falling back towards Earth.

And We'll also talk about the mysterious "space balls" that have washed up on beaches in north Queensland. These metallic spheres are believed to be fragments of a rocket that survived its fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

You can listen live on 6PR (882 AM) at around 2:20 pm AWST, or catch up afterwards via the 6PR app.

UPDATE: Pushed back to 2:35 pm!

Hey, Folks.

If you're free around 2:20 pm AWST, I'll be joining 6PR's The Long Lunch with Tod Johnston, and we'll chat about how NASA is attempting something that's never been done before: rescuing a space telescope that's slowly falling back towards Earth.

And We'll also talk about the mysterious "space balls" that have washed up on beaches in north Queensland. These metallic spheres are believed to be fragments of a rocket that survived its fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

You can listen live on 6PR (882 AM) at around 2:20 pm AWST, or catch up afterwards via the 6PR app.

Hopefully, the clouds will part tonight, as the International Space Station will fly over extremely bright tonight (July 3rd) at 6:24 pm at Mag -3.0.

To use the attached maps, face south, hold the map above your head, and you'll see the path of the flyover.

Hopefully, the clouds will part tonight, as the International Space Station will fly over extremely bright tonight (July 3rd) at 6:24 pm at Mag -3.0.

To use the attached maps, face south, hold the map above your head, and you'll see the path of the flyover.

The International Space Station will fly over Western Australia extremely bright tonight at 6:53 pm (Mag -3.4), and on Saturday, June 13th, at 6:05 pm (Mag -3.6).

To use the attached maps, face south and hold the map above your head, and you'll see the path of the flyover.

You can also get the Spot the Station app for iPhone and the Heavens-Above app for Android to help you find it.

The International Space Station will fly over Western Australia extremely bright tonight at 6:53 pm (Mag -3.4), and on Saturday, June 13th, at 6:05 pm (Mag -3.6).

To use the attached maps, face south and hold the map above your head, and you'll see the path of the flyover.

You can also get the Spot the Station app for iPhone and the Heavens-Above app for Android to help you find it.

Hey Folks,

If you've been looking towards the north west after sunset and wondering what those two bright "stars" are. It's Venus and Jupiter are having a very public celestial meetup.

If the clouds decide to clear off soon, these two planets in our evening sky will appear less than 1.6° apart tonight and tomorrow night (9 and 10 June). This event is known as a planetary conjunction, an apparent alignment of objects in the sky.

While Venus and Jupiter appear side by side from our perspective here on Earth, they're actually nowhere near each other in space. Venus is currently about 181 million kilometres from Earth, while Jupiter is about 901 million kilometres away.

That's a bit like two people appearing to stand side by side in a photo, except one is in Perth and the other is somewhere near Bali.

For the best view of this cosmic canoodling:

🌅 Look towards the north west about 45 to 60 minutes after sunset.

🤏 The pair will be separated by less than a pinkie finger's width when held at arm's length.

✨ Venus will be dazzling at magnitude -4.0.

✨ Jupiter will be glowing nearby at magnitude -1.9.

✨ Look to the left of Castor and Pollux in Gemini.

So if you're outside tonight or tomorrow, take a moment to enjoy the sight.

Alright, WA, it’s that time again when the International Space Station (ISS) decides to show off.

The space station is doing a couple of ridiculously bright flyovers this weekend, and yes, it will look like a suspiciously fast-moving star that makes you question your life choices for a second.

When to look:

• Saturday, May 2nd – 6:45 pm (Mag -3.6, aka “why is that star brighter than my future?”)
• Sunday, May 3rd – 5:58 pm (also Mag -3.6, because subtlety is overrated)

How To Use The Attached Maps:

If you’ve got one of those sky maps, hold it above your head like you’re summoning something ancient. It’s science. Trust me.

Or, if you prefer technology doing the heavy lifting, grab the Spot the Station app and let it guide you like a space-savvy GPS.

Try not to loudly announce “UFO???” in front of your neighbours (or do, I’m not your supervisor)

Bonus facts to impress your mates:

• The space station is 109 metres end-to-end and 75 metres wide, so Optus Stadium's playing surface is longer than it.
• There are 7 people on the station at the moment (4 Russians, 3 Americans, and a French woman)
• It’s moving at about 28,000 km/h, so if you blink too long, it’s already halfway to Kalgoorlie
• In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, travelling through 16 sunrises and sunsets.
• It’s brighter than most stars because it’s catching sunlight while we’re in twilight, basically doing its best “main character energy” impression

Anyway, get outside, look up, and enjoy your free cosmic flyby. No tickets, no queues, no parking drama. Just Perth skies doing their thing.

Alright, WA, it’s that time again when the International Space Station (ISS) decides to show off.

The space station is doing a couple of ridiculously bright flyovers this weekend, and yes, it will look like a suspiciously fast-moving star that makes you question your life choices for a second.

When to look:

• Saturday, May 2nd – 6:45 pm (Mag -3.6, aka “why is that star brighter than my future?”)
• Sunday, May 3rd – 5:58 pm (also Mag -3.6, because subtlety is overrated)

How To Use The Attached Maps:

If you’ve got one of those sky maps, hold it above your head like you’re summoning something ancient. It’s science. Trust me.

Or, if you prefer technology doing the heavy lifting, grab the Spot the Station app and let it guide you like a space-savvy GPS.

Try not to loudly announce “UFO???” in front of your neighbours (or do, I’m not your supervisor)

Bonus facts to impress your mates:

• The space station is 109 metres end-to-end and 75 metres wide, so Optus Stadium's playing surface is longer than it.
• There are 7 people on the station at the moment (4 Russians, 3 Americans, and a French woman)
• It’s moving at about 28,000 km/h, so if you blink too long, it’s already halfway to Kalgoorlie
• In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, travelling through 16 sunrises and sunsets.
• It’s brighter than most stars because it’s catching sunlight while we’re in twilight, basically doing its best “main character energy” impression

Anyway, get outside, look up, and enjoy your free cosmic flyby. No tickets, no queues, no parking drama. Just Perth skies doing their thing.

Say hello to C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), a distant visitor currently passing through our cosmic neighbourhood.

This comet was discovered in 2025 by the Pan-STARRS survey telescope (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) in Hawaii. Pan-STARRS is basically one of Earth’s most diligent cosmic watchdogs, constantly scanning the skies for:

• Near-Earth asteroids

• New comets

• Anything that might surprise us… like a Goa’uld Ha’tak warship

So when C/2025 R3 popped up, it was flagged as a new long-period comet making its way into the inner Solar System.

Earlier this month, the comet was visible in binoculars, and even just with the naked eye from dark rural skies, in the early morning before sunrise.

It reached Perihelion (closest to the Sun) on April 19, at about 74.6 million km, and its closest approach to Earth on April 26, at about 73.2 million km. Now, it’s making a return appearance in the evening sky. To see it:

👉 Look just after sunset low in the western sky

👉 Around 6:30 pm onwards

👉 Find a spot with a clear horizon (a beach is perfect)

Bring:

🔭 Binoculars

📷 A camera with a decent zoom lens

📸 A tripod for longer exposures

It has an estimated orbital period of around 170,000 years, so this comet likely originated from the distant Oort Cloud, a vast spherical halo of icy objects surrounding our Solar System. In other words, this comet has been drifting in deep freeze for an absurd amount of time before being nudged inward.

As it falls toward the Sun, things get interesting. The heat causes frozen ices, water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, to sublimate (skip the liquid phase and turn straight into gas). This can be quite an active, even explosive process. That gas and dust forms a glowing coma (the fuzzy cloud around the comet), and it gets stretched out into a tail by sunlight and the solar wind. That’s how it goes from an invisible chunk of ice and rock to a faint, glowing object in our sky.

Here’s the kicker, comets like this are often one-and-done visitors. Because of it's enormous orbit, it may not return for hundreds of thousands of years or it could be flung out of the Solar System entirely by planets like Jupiter.

So when you’re looking at C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), you’re potentially seeing something that hasn’t been near the Sun since before humans existed, and may never come back again.

Say hello to C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), a distant visitor currently passing through our cosmic neighbourhood.

This comet was discovered in 2025 by the Pan-STARRS survey telescope (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) in Hawaii. Pan-STARRS is basically one of Earth’s most diligent cosmic watchdogs, constantly scanning the skies for:

• Near-Earth asteroids

• New comets

• Anything that might surprise us… like a Goa’uld Ha’tak warship

So when C/2025 R3 popped up, it was flagged as a new long-period comet making its way into the inner Solar System.

Earlier this month, the comet was visible in binoculars, and even just with the naked eye from dark rural skies, in the early morning before sunrise.

It reached Perihelion (closest to the Sun) on April 19, at about 74.6 million km, and its closest approach to Earth on April 26, at about 73.2 million km. Now, it’s making a return appearance in the evening sky. To see it:

👉 Look just after sunset low in the western sky

👉 Around 6:30 pm onwards

👉 Find a spot with a clear horizon (a beach is perfect)

Bring:

🔭 Binoculars

📷 A camera with a decent zoom lens

📸 A tripod for longer exposures

It has an estimated orbital period of around 170,000 years, so this comet likely originated from the distant Oort Cloud, a vast spherical halo of icy objects surrounding our Solar System. In other words, this comet has been drifting in deep freeze for an absurd amount of time before being nudged inward.

As it falls toward the Sun, things get interesting. The heat causes frozen ices, water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, to sublimate (skip the liquid phase and turn straight into gas). This can be quite an active, even explosive process. That gas and dust forms a glowing coma (the fuzzy cloud around the comet), and it gets stretched out into a tail by sunlight and the solar wind. That’s how it goes from an invisible chunk of ice and rock to a faint, glowing object in our sky.

Here’s the kicker, comets like this are often one-and-done visitors. Because of it's enormous orbit, it may not return for hundreds of thousands of years or it could be flung out of the Solar System entirely by planets like Jupiter.

So when you’re looking at C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), you’re potentially seeing something that hasn’t been near the Sun since before humans existed, and may never come back again.

Hey Folks!

The fog was very cool this morning. I thought I might make a post to explain how it occurs.

If it felt like you were walking or driving in a cloud this morning, you were!

Fog is one of the most familiar weather phenomena, yet also one of the most misunderstood. It can feel eerie, peaceful, or mildly inconvenient depending on whether you’re enjoying a coffee or trying to find the car in a car park. But behind that hazy curtain is some surprisingly elegant science.

At its core, fog is a cloud that couldn’t be bothered staying in the sky. It forms when tiny water droplets become suspended in the air, scattering light and reducing visibility. Each droplet is incredibly small, around 10 to 20 micrometres wide, but when millions of them gather together, they turn your morning into a soft-focus filter.

Meteorologists officially call it fog when visibility drops below one kilometre. If you can see a bit further than that, it’s called mist, which is essentially fog being polite. Fog forms when air cools to its dew point, the moment it can no longer hold all its water vapour and decides to make it everyone’s problem.

To make fog, you need three simple ingredients:

Moisture in the air

Cooling temperatures

Calm or light winds

Get that combination right, and the atmosphere quietly transforms invisible water into something you can walk through. There are a few common types:

Radiation fog forms overnight as the ground cools, chilling the air above it. It’s particularly fond of valleys and rural areas, where it settles in like it owns the place.

Advection fog occurs when warm, moist air drifts over a cooler surface, like the ocean. This is the kind that rolls dramatically along coastlines and makes everything look cinematic.

Valley fog occurs when cold air sinks into low-lying areas and traps moisture, creating what is essentially a lake of cloud.

Evaporation fog, or steam fog, appears when cold air moves over warmer water. It looks like the Earth has just made itself a hot cup of tea.

Fog has a reputation for muting the world, but it’s not actually the droplets doing the heavy lifting. Instead, it’s the conditions that create fog that affect sound. Fog often forms alongside temperature inversions, where cooler air sits near the ground, and warmer air sits above it. This setup can bend sound waves back down toward the surface, letting them travel further. At the same time, humid air absorbs less sound than dry air, which means noise can carry more easily.

The result is a strange mix where some sounds seem quieter, while others seem louder or closer than they should be, and because you can’t see where the sound is coming from, your brain fills in the blanks, often with unnecessary drama.

Fog has left its mark on science, culture, and the occasional slightly confused morning commute. It can create a rare optical effect called a fogbow, a ghostly white version of a rainbow that looks like it forgot to load properly.

Some of the world’s most famous fog rolls through San Francisco, where it has become such a local icon that it even has a nickname, "Karl!" Meanwhile, the phrase “pea soup fog” comes from historic smog events in London, which were less “mysterious atmosphere” and more “industrial revolution gone a bit too far”. Fog also plays a surprisingly helpful role in nature, providing moisture to plants in dry environments.

Fog isn’t just an Earthly inconvenience. It’s a Solar System-wide phenomenon with some truly strange variations. On Saturn's moon Titan, fog forms from methane instead of water. It gathers around lakes of liquid hydrocarbons at around minus 180 degrees Celsius. So yes, it’s fog… but it smells more like fuel than fresh rain. On Mars, thin fogs made of water ice can form in the early morning. They’re delicate, faint, and a bit underwhelming, like fog that didn’t quite commit. Then there’s Venus, which takes things to an extreme. Its atmosphere is filled with thick haze made of sulfuric acid droplets. It’s essentially fog turned up to eleven, with temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Not ideal for a morning walk.

Hope that was interesting for you. Next time you step into a foggy morning, take a second to enjoy it.