In November we get one of the year’s best celestial light shows - Limerick Astronomy Club
Limerick Astronomy Club meets on the first Thursday of each month in Mary Immaculate College
As the nights draw in this November, we get a front-row seat to one of the year’s best celestial light shows: the Leonid meteor shower. Peaking around November 17, these 'shooting stars' are debris left behind by Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Although the predicted rate for 2025 is modest, they are famously fast-travelling at about 70 kilometres per second and often leave bright trails across the sky. Find a clear spot and enjoy this dramatic natural fireworks display!
But November also marks a momentous anniversary for human-made space history: the day we first successfully landed on a comet.
Ten years ago, on November 12, 2014, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission achieved the seemingly impossible.
After a ten-year journey, its little washing-machine-sized lander, Philae, successfully touched down on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko - a strangely shaped, 4km-long lump of ice and dust often described as looking like a giant rubber duck .
The drama was immense. Philae’s harpoons, meant to anchor it to the comet's low-gravity surface, failed to fire.
It bounced twice before settling in a shadowy spot, landing awkwardly on its side near a cliff. This meant its solar panels couldn't fully recharge, giving scientists only 48 hours to collect data.
Despite the nail-biting finish, Philae sent back invaluable information. Perhaps its most surprising finding came from Rosetta itself, which analysed the comet’s water vapour.
It revealed that the isotopic signature of the water was vastly different from water on Earth.
This finding directly challenged the popular theory that comets like 67P delivered the majority of water to our planet billions of years ago.
It's a fantastic reminder that the smallest robots can often deliver the biggest cosmic surprises!
The Limerick Astronomy Club meets next on the first Thursday in November, in Mary Immaculate College, Room 202 at 8pm. We'd love to welcome you and embark on this cosmic journey together. Reach out to us at [email protected] for more info.