Tartan of the Day
Aug 22
Astronomy & Natural Wonders
Tributes to the beauty of the universe ...
Click any picture to navigate to the page of interest for more information about this tartan or its associated day.
Mars Exploration (Perseverance)
Feb 18
Landing of Mars Rover Perseverance
The colours of this tartan include a red background depicting the surface of Mars; blue depicts the water-rich past of Mars and the presence of water, mainly as ice, on the planet today; the four green lines represent Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun.
Milky Way
May 21
Milky Way Viewing Season
This tartan, designed by Carol A.L. Martin, represents a view of the Milky Way with the light bands showing the concentration of stars located in the direction of the galactic plane along with the dark regions in the Zone of Avoidance where the light is blocked by interstellar dust. The red lines represent the cosmological red shift, due to the expansion of the universe.
Aurora Borealis
Jan 15
Winter Auroras
Auroras are produced when the magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind, which carries charged particles mainly in the form of electrons and protons, and precipitates them into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere), where their energy is lost.
Serpens Cloud Core
May 7
Astronomy Day (Spring)
According to our best available estimates, stars having about 90 percent of the sun's mass are just now starting to die in the globulars. These stars are most probably around 15 billion years old, but they could conceivably be as young as 12 billion years or as old as 18 billion years.
Star trails
May 7
Astronomy Day (Spring)
Photography by Lincoln Harrison - There are two methods popular with star photographers – using one very long exposure (long enough to register some noticeable star movement; at least 30 minutes) OR taking many shorter exposures and stacking those images in a way that shows sequential movement.
Sunspots
May 7
Astronomy Day (Spring)
Sunspots tend to appear in cycles of 11 years and can sometimes erupt into powerful solar storms that shoot streams of charged particles into space, occasionally in the direction of Earth. Some solar storms can bombard Earth's magnetic field and disrupt power grids or knock out satellites in orbit!
The Milky Way
May 21
Milky Way Viewing Season
In western culture, the name "Milky Way" is derived from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky. The term is derived from the Hellenistic Greek for "milky circle." In Greek mythology, the Milky Way was supposedly made from the forceful suckling of Heracles, as Hera acted as a wet nurse.