The Big Bang, dark matter and the universe, all in a night’s work for our astronomy guide and PhD student Carlos Bacigalupo. Last month Mia came to Sydney Observatory to discuss her class project on the Big Bang with Carlos.

Tiffany Day is one of our astronomy guides and in this post she discusses robotic explorers of our Solar System and beyond. If you've been paying attention to recent space news, you would have heard that the New Horizons space probe completed a successful flyby of Pluto - our first ever high resolution view of the planet in the history of our species - back in July of this year, or that the Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars three years ago, and has just recently provided the first hard evidence of liquid water on Mars.

Regular solar observer & correspondent Harry Roberts previously reported on the complex Delta Group of sunspots, AR12422. Here he follows up with a report on the group's coronal loops. AR12422: Coronal Loops.                                                           Harry Roberts.

November has a spectacular treat in store for all of you early-birds! During late October, Venus has been dancing in the pre-dawn sky with Jupiter and Mars. This dance continues in early November, with Venus and Mars at their closest on November 3 and 4, after which Venus slowly starts to retreat towards the east horizon.

Regular solar observer & correspondent Harry Roberts reports on active region AR12422, a complex Delta Group: AR12422: Complex Delta Group.                                                      Harry Roberts Hale’s invention of the visual magnetograph and the Hale Classification of sunspots is a heroic tale, but we can only touch on it here.

What is the closest star, in the night-time sky, to Earth? Almost everyone answers Alpha Centauri, the brighter of the pair of Pointer stars. But Alpha Centauri is in fact a system of three stars.

  This Friday, October 9, at dawn the Moon will move in front of Venus and hide, or occult, it. These occultations of Venus are visible from Earth once or twice per year, yet from any one location, such as Sydney, it can be about 5 to 10 years between occurrences.

As Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko reaches its closest point to the Sun, perihelion, on August 13, its activity is increasing. This short lived jet was spotted by the narrow angle camera on board ESA's Rosetta spacecraft.