There have been two "bonus" episodes, featuring extended interviews with Commander Jim Lovell and Flight Controller John Aaron : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0894pk1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p089lxh8 John Aaron is the "EECOM" Controller who made the legendary "try SCE to AUX" call which...

This comet has got brighter in the last few weeks, and will be getting higher in the sky too. It's now reached its peak 8th magnitude and is tracking rapidly from Cassiopeia through Camelopardalis . However I had some trouble finding it at first: there was sufficient inaccuracy in the orbital elemet...

All the hardware which I use for my comet imaging dates back to the turn of the century... I bought the Celestron C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope and Meade 0.33 focal reducer brand-new back in 2003. Originally I used it on an EQ5 mount with dual-axis motors: and so had to spend quite a while "star-h...

I got another image last night, which shows the comet even more elongated than last week:

I've just been watching a very interesting "webinar" from the BAA Comet Section : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2d_t_fDndo (this is a YouTube recording of a Zoom meeting which took place at the start of April - before the comet started to fragment) . It consists of a 25-minute presentation from C...

This afternoon we'll have the Service Module separation, after which Jim Lovell looks at it out of the window and reports: there's one whole side of that spacecraft missing! https://www.honeysucklecreek.net/images/images_Apollo_13/AS13-58-8464_cropped_adjusted_sm.jpg And then about 7pm this evening ...

I've been following this comet for five months now and it's still around 8th magnitude and well-placed in our sky (in Camelopardalis):

At around 90hrs Ground Elapsed Time (which will be Wednesday afternoon our time) they begin talking through the construction of the makeshift adaptor to plug the CM's air-purifying canisters into the Lunar Module (this takes about 3.5 hours before they get it installed). https://spacecenter.org/wp-c...

I've just discovered this site: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/ which presents an amazingly detailed archive of the mission, including all the individual audio loops along with a wealth of pictures and graphics. The Oxygen tank explosion takes place at 55hrs 54mins Elapsed Time, but it takes them s...

It's amazing to think that the Hubble Space Telescope was launched thirty years ago this month. Originally designed for a 15-year mission (but almost written off after its initial problems with the mirror) it's still going after three decades (and four servicing trips from the Space Shuttle) . I've ...