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Nikon's new Action binoculars are here, and they fix the one thing the Aculon A211 was always criticised for. The eye relief on the old Aculon was pretty poor for glasses wearers, and we heard about it constantly at the counter. Nikon has sorted that out properly with the new range, and made a few other meaningful improvements while they were at it. The Aculon A211 is officially discontinued. The Action series is its replacement, with seven models covering the range from compact 8x42s through to a 16x50 and a 10-22x zoom. The Nikon Action series replaces the Aculon A211 with eye relief of 15mm or more across most models (up from 11.6mm on the old 10x42), wider fields of view on several models, and an aluminium alloy chassis. Seven models are available from 8x42 to 16x50, plus a 10-22x zoom. Available now at Bintel. What Changed from the Nikon Aculon A211? The biggest change is eye relief, followed by a wider field of view on several models and a new aluminium chassis. These aren't cosmetic updates, they address the main complaints customers had with the Aculon. On the 10x42, the real field of view has gone from 6.0 to 6.8 degrees, which is a pretty meaningful improvement at 10x magnification. Three models in the range now have an apparent field of 60 degrees or more (the 10x42, 12x50 and 16x50), putting them in wide-field territory. That's genuinely hard to find at this price point. The body has changed too. The Aculon used polycarbonate construction; the Action switches to an aluminium alloy chassis with rubber armouring. It adds a little weight (790g on the 42mm models, 935-950g on the 50mm models) but the feel is quite different in the hand. More solid, better grip, and the rubber eyecups are now multi-click so you can lock in your exact position. Are the Nikon Action Binoculars Good for Glasses Wearers? Yes, most models in the Nikon Action range are well suited to glasses wearers, which is a big improvement over the Aculon A211. The old 10x42 had just 11.6mm of eye relief, making it uncomfortable for anyone wearing glasses. The new 10x42 offers 16.1mm, and most of the range comes in at 15mm or more. The 7x50 is the standout at 19.6mm of eye relief, and the 8x42 sits at 17.3mm. The only model that falls short is the 16x50 at 13mm, which is still better than the old Aculon but less generous than the rest of the lineup. If eye relief is your main concern, the 8x42 or 7x50 are the picks. Which Nikon Action Binocular Is Best for Birdwatching? For most birdwatchers, the 8x42 is the one to go for. It is hard to go past this format as an all-rounder: eight times magnification is stable enough to hold comfortably for long periods, the 42mm objective collects plenty of light for most conditions, and the 8-degree real field of view makes it easy to track a bird moving through bush or scrub. The 17.3mm of eye relief means glasses wearers are well looked after too. You can find it here: Nikon ACTION 8x42. If you want a bit more reach, the 10x42 is a good option. The wider FOV compared to the old Aculon 10x42 is a real improvement here. Popular for birding in open environments where you're often scanning across a wider area or watching birds in flight. For early morning or late evening sessions where light is low, the 7x50 is worth a serious look. At 7x magnification with a 50mm objective, the exit pupil comes out at just over 7mm, which is about as much light as your eye can actually use. It's also popular for marine use for the same reason. What About the Higher Magnification Models? The 10x50 and 12x50 both bring more light gathering than the 42mm models, which suits observers who want to use their binoculars in lower light or pick out finer detail at distance. The 12x50 is particularly interesting because despite the higher magnification it still delivers a 60-plus degree apparent field of view, which is not something you often find at this price. The 10x50 is a more relaxed handheld option if 12x feels a bit much. The 16x50 is for specific use cases where you really need that extra magnification, spotting sport at distance, watching wildlife across a paddock, that sort of thing. At 16x, a tripod adapter (the Nikon TRA-2 or TRA-3) is pretty much essential for comfortable extended use. Are Zoom Binoculars Worth It? Zoom binoculars are worth it if you genuinely need a single pair to cover multiple magnifications and are happy to trade a little optical sharpness for that versatility. The Action Zoom 10-22x50 lets you step from 10x right up to 22x with a smooth zoom mechanism, which sounds appealing. There are situations where it comes into its own, identifying something in the distance and then zooming in for a closer look, or switching between scanning and detailed observation without swapping binos. The trade-off is that image quality at any fixed magnification won't quite match a dedicated fixed model at the same price, and the field of view narrows significantly as you push towards 22x. For most birdwatchers, a fixed 8x42 or 10x42 will serve better. But if versatility is genuinely your priority, it's a solid option. Buy Nikon Action Binoculars in Australia We've got the full Nikon Action range in stock now at Bintel. If you've been a fan of the Aculon A211 or have been holding off waiting for a better option at this price point, the Action series is a pretty compelling step up. The eye relief improvement alone makes a meaningful difference for a large portion of buyers, and the wider fields of view on the 10x42 and 12x50 are a real bonus. Have a question about which model is right for you? Pop into the BINTEL shop or give us a call. We're always happy to talk binoculars.

Building blocks of life found on another asteroid Just over a year ago we talked about the discovery of some of the building blocks for life being found in samples returned from the asteroid Bennu from the OSIRIS-REx mission. (This is the one where the  lid was "stuck" on the sample jar!) Now researchers have found thymine, nucleobases adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil which are the foundations for both RNA and DNA and from which all life on Earth is formed. These were discovered in a sample of the asteroid Ryugu and returned to Earth by Japan's Hayabusa 2 in 2020. Carbonaceous asteroids or "C-type" asteroids like Ryugu are common in the asteroid belt and are targets for exploration as they contain pristine organic materials from the earliest period of the Solar System. "Organics" are not signs of life, but they are what life is formed from. We observe them throughout the Solar System as well in vast quantities in interstellar space. Organic materials have also been collected from other sources, including the famous Murchison meteorite. Did the foundations of life arrive from space? Another finding of organic materials on an asteroid, this time from Ryugu, certainly boosts the certainty that this might be the case. It also points to organics being widespread throughout the Solar System.  A detailed, although not too technical overview on these results can be found here at astrobiology.com If you'd like to read the full scientific article at Nature, click here Hubble captures the break up of Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) You might remember we chatted about a number of comets that graced our skies in 2025, including when two were visible in the same camera frame! Several of our BINTEL customers managed to capture this and we featured their images in our blogs and newsletters.  Image from Comet C/2025 R1 (SWAN) and Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) captured near Mars by Glenn Pickford on the 21st of September and featured in my blog post a few days after. The smaller comet near the bottom left of the frame is the one that has broken up. One of these comets, C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), has broken up into smaller pieces and in a amazing stroke of luck, was being observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) while it was happening! The event happened in November 2025 and the strange thing is the comet wasn't the target of the observation by Hubble.  “Sometimes the best science happens by accident,” said co-investigator John Noonan, a research professor in the Department of Physics at Auburn University in Alabama. “This comet got observed because our original comet was not viewable due to some new technical constraints after we won our proposal. We had to find a new target—and right when we observed it, it happened to break apart, which is the slimmest of slim chances.”  Sequence showing the break up via NASA, ESA, Dennis Bodewits (AU) It was also some time before the break up was discovered on the Hubble images.  It appears to have broken into at least four separate objects, each with their own coma and tail, with further fragmentation likely.  While I was taking an initial look at the data, I saw that there were four comets in those images when we only proposed to look at one,” said Noonan. “So we knew this was something really, really special.” One of the interesting things is that astronomers have been trying to catch detailed observations of cometary disintegrations but scheduling precious telescope time has always been an issue. Basically, there's no way to work out when it will happen. It's been tried before and has never been successful.  The approx. location in the Solar System where the comet broke up “The irony is now we're just studying a regular comet and it crumbles in front of our eyes,” said principal investigator Dennis Bodewits, also a professor in Auburn University’s Department of Physics.  We always like to point out whether astro events like these could be seen with your own telescope. While the fragments of Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) are now on the way out the Solar System and unlikely to return, they're beyond seeing in your own gear. Read more at the NASA website here. Eleven new moons for Saturn Brings the total to 285 Astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope at Maunakea, Hawaii have discovered 11 new moon of the gas giant planet, Saturn. Layout of some of Saturn's major moons. Image via NASA Saturn already had the largest number of known moons of any planet in the Solar System and this discovery pushes the number even higher.  Given the complex environment around Saturn this number is likely to continue to grow as more discoveries are made. Sadly, you won't be able to observe these newly found moons even with the telescopes we sell at BINTEL as they are too faint. They are also yet to receive any official names. You can read the announcement made this week at the Minor Planet Center here. Artemis II rolls out after leak fixes Astronauts enter quarantine once again.  It's been a long process, but this week NASA commenced what it hopes to be the final roll out of Artemis II ahead of the launch from the 1st of April onwards.  NASA’s crawler-transporter 2 will carry the 11-million-pound stack, including the mobile launcher, at about 1 mph* along the four-mile route from Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad. The journey can take up to 12 hours. Meanwhile the four astronauts have again gone into quarantine in preparation for the flight.  The entire "stack" will need to go through another round of full propellant loading and unloading, sometimes called a wet rehearsal, ahead of the launch and I think all space fans are crossing their fingers for successful flight to this Moon this Easter. Memories of Halley’s Comet in 1986? Finally for this week, we're coming up on the 40th anniversary of Halley's Comet being visible in 1986.  I'm sure many of our umm, mature, members of the BINTEL community might have some fond memories or even images they'd be happy to share around to mark the occasion.  Get in contact with us if you do. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 21st March 2026 *It's NASA, so sometimes they still use imperial measurements for general public announcements like this!

Do planets ever collide? Looks like astronomers have spotted the signs of exoplanets colliding Collisions between celestial bodies have been known about for some time. On a large scale, we've observed black holes colliding or merging that send out massive gravitational waves across the Universe and are observed by detectors such as LIGO. Locally, we see signs of rocky bodies impacting on the Moon and the Earth and even Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 breaking apart and slamming into Jupiter in 1994. They were large-scale impacts early in the Solar System. The Moon is thought to the result of a proto-planet called Theia hitting the Earth some 4.5 billion years ago. As planetary systems around stars move past their early formation period, such large-scale impacts become rare. It's been a long time since anything like this has occurred in the Solar System, which from our point of view isn't a bad thing! If they were happening among planets around other stars, would we be able observe them today? Astronomer Andy Tzanidakis from the University of Washington was combing through light curves of the star Gaia20ehk about 11,000 light years away in the constellation of Puppis in the southern sky when he noticed something strange. This is main sequence star and considered to be quite stable.  “The star’s light output was nice and flat, but starting in 2016 it had these three dips in brightness. And then, right around 2021, it went completely bonkers,” said Tzanidakis.  “I can’t emphasize enough that stars like our sun don’t do that. So when we saw this one, we were like ‘Hello, what’s going on here?’” What seems to be happening was large quantities of dust and rocks passing in front of Gaia20ehk causing its light to dip and fluctuate. They were traced back to likely major impacts between rocky planets orbiting their host star. Star Gaia20ehk in Pupis, seen here in the centre of the orange crosshairs in the inset image. Image via NASA/NSF NOIRLab “It’s incredible that various telescopes caught this impact in real time,” Tzanidakis said. “There are only a few other planetary collisions of any kind on record, and none that bear so many similarities to the impact that created the Earth and moon. If we can observe more moments like this elsewhere in the galaxy, it will teach us lots about the formation of our world.” What's also exciting about this unique discovery is that it points to way to track and observe other collisions between exoplanets, with it likely forming a basis for observations with the newly-commissioned Vera C. Rubin Observatory. More on this exciting announcement here. We've changed the orbit of an asteroid! Not just the asteroid's moon, but the entire system You might remember a little while ago the NASA DART mission impacted the "moon" Dimorphos, (just over 160m in diameter) which orbits the larger asteroid Didymos and changed it path. This was done as a demonstration of a possible planetary defense system in case a large body heads directly towards Earth.  Hubble Space Telescope image of the  Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system a few days after the DART impact. Image via NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI), Joe Depasquale (STScI) Now follow up observations have found that the entire system has had its orbit around the Sun changed by the DART impact. This is the first time that humans have altered the orbit of any celestial body. While DART only whacked into Dimorphos, as the two bodies are gravitationally bound, it has changed the obits of both of them. “This is a tiny change to the orbit, but given enough time, even a tiny change can grow to a significant deflection,” said Thomas Statler, lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The team’s amazingly precise measurement again validates kinetic impact as a technique for defending Earth against asteroid hazards and shows how a binary asteroid might be deflected by impacting just one member of the pair.” Impacts on Earth by rocky bodies are rare but do happen. Having tools to move incoming threats even by a small amount might help avoid catastrophic damage.  Read more via the NASA article here. Site for the first Chinese astronauts on land on the Moon narrowed down  Ever heard of  Rimae Bode? While NASA is pushing ahead with an aggressive timeline to return humans to the surface of the Moon around 2028, China has its own plans for a mission to land sometime in 2030.  There's been much discussion about a landing near the Moon's south pole where water ice and other resources might be found, this has issue with communications and navigation. Researchers have now identified a region called Rima Bode, much closer to the Moon's equator, for the first China crewed landing. The Rima Bode crater region on the Moon. Image via NASA "Rima Bode is a high priority ‘sweet spot,’” says Jun Huang, a planetary geologist at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan and co-author of the new study. “Think of it as a prime piece of lunar real estate: its location near the equator provides much flatter, safer terrain for landing, along with constant sunlight for power [during the lunar day] and a direct line of sight to Earth for easy communication.” The crater region contains impacts and features that range in age from 4.07 billion years to as young as 510 million years and is rich in geological features. And yes, you should be able to spot this area with at least a 6 or 8 inch aperture telescope.  Here's where you'll find it -  The red star indicates where Rima Bode is located. Image via Nature Astronomy Read more about this possible landing site here. And finally for this week, Artemis II has a new launch date: April 1st 2026 Hydrogen fuel leaks and helium fuel system leaks now fixed Astronomy and space nerds have been keenly waiting on the launch of Artemis II, the first spaceflight to return humans to the Moon since 1972. Artemis II. Image via Cristóbal Herrera/EPA NASA announced this week that system problems which have delayed the launch of Artemis II over the last couple of months have now been resolved. A projected launch date of the 1st of April 2026 US time is now planned. (Yes, I know....going to be a lot of comments about that one) Fingers crossed no further delays occur!  Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 14th March 2026 PS: Happy Pi Day!

Bar-tailed Godwits in flight, Manawatu Estuary, New Zealand. These are the same birds that winter on Australian tidal flats. Image: Wikimedia Commons   Back in our spring edition we wrote about the arrival of migratory shorebirds on Australian shores. Birds that had flown from Arctic and sub-Arctic breeding grounds, some of them non-stop for five or six days, landing on our tidal flats thin and worn and ready to feed. By October most of them had settled in along our coastlines, and through the southern summer they've been doing exactly that, eating, moulting, rebuilding. Now it's March, and the preparations for the northward journey are well underway. The Bar-tailed Godwits, Red Knots, Curlew Sandpipers, Red-necked Stints, Ruddy Turnstones, Whimbrel, Eastern Curlew, and others that have been part of our coastal landscape since spring are now in the final stages of getting ready to leave. A lot of them are in the best plumage they'll show all year, breeding colours earned for the northern hemisphere spring, and they are feeding with a focused intensity that is noticeably different to the pace of midsummer. The birding at good tidal sites in March is very good. It's also finite, because once the departure begins in earnest, the numbers thin quickly. What you'll actually see The plumage transformation this time of year is one of the things that surprises people who haven't visited a shorebird site in autumn before. Bar-tailed Godwits in breeding dress are warm rufous across the neck and underparts, a long way from the pale brownish-grey of a bird that arrived in September. Red Knots in full breeding plumage are brick-red from face to belly. Curlew Sandpipers in breeding colours are deep chestnut across the body. These are not subtle changes. Side by side with the same species in non-breeding plumage, they look like different birds. The species mix is also shifting. Some of the less common species that were present through the summer are still around in small numbers, and this is a time when working through a flock carefully can turn up something unexpected. It's worth taking your time rather than just ticking the obvious species and moving on. The Bar-tailed Godwit's northward departure is worth pausing on. Birds leaving south-eastern Australia fly non-stop to the Yellow Sea staging grounds, roughly ten thousand kilometres, without landing. To do it, they increase their body weight by more than fifty percent in the weeks before departure, converting almost all of that mass to fuel. The bird you're watching probe a mudflat in front of you might be two weeks from one of the longest non-stop flights made by any animal. Where to go Shorebird site quality comes down to the extent and quality of intertidal mudflat, and disturbance levels. The well-known sites are well-known because they've produced birds consistently across many years of observation. On the east coast, the Hunter Estuary and Kooragang Island in NSW are among the most reliable sites in the country. Corner Inlet in Victoria holds good concentrations of godwit and knot through March. The Coorong in South Australia covers a vast area of tidal habitat with consistent diversity. In Queensland, the Cairns Esplanade foreshore puts a wide range of species at close range on most mornings, and it's accessible even for visitors without a car. In Western Australia, Roebuck Bay at Broome is the benchmark. Large tidal range, extensive mudflat, and species diversity among the best in Australia. Eighty Mile Beach to the south is larger and less visited. If you can get to either of those in March, it's worth prioritising over almost anything else. Working with the tide A shorebird site at low tide can look nearly empty. Birds spread out across the exposed mudflat to feed and can be very distant, sometimes several hundred metres from shore, visible only as dots. At high tide, the water covers the feeding areas and pushes birds into tight roosts on sandbars, elevated margins, and patches of higher ground, often at much closer range. These two states are different experiences, and that difference matters. The approach that tends to work well is arriving two hours before high tide, watching the feeding flocks contract towards shore as the water rises, then settling in to observe the roost at high water when birds are packed together and accessible. The first feeding session after the tide begins to drop is also productive. First light and a rising tide together is about as good as shorebird birding gets. How to work a roost A high-tide roost looks uniform at first glance. Hundreds or thousands of birds packed together, mostly sleeping or preening, appearing similar in size and colour on a casual scan. The unusual species in that flock are just sitting in there with the common birds, and the only way to find them is to go through the flock methodically, checking each bird. The things worth checking are body size relative to immediately adjacent birds, bill length and shape, and leg colour. A Ruff among Red-necked Stints is considerably larger than everything around it, but you won't register that unless you're comparing it to its neighbours. Lesser and Greater Sand Plovers require close structural attention. A scope is what makes this kind of work possible at any real distance, because the identifying features of difficult shorebird species live at a resolution that binoculars at a hundred and fifty metres don't deliver. It's worth submitting your counts The East Asian-Australasian Flyway, the migration system connecting Australian coastlines to Arctic breeding grounds through south-east Asia, is under significant pressure from ongoing tidal flat reclamation along the Yellow Sea coast. Critical staging sites that shorebirds depend on for both legs of the migration have been lost or degraded at a scale that has driven clear population declines across several species over the past two decades. Australian observers contribute to the international monitoring that documents these trends and supports habitat protection arguments in the countries where the damage is occurring. If you read a leg flag or wing tag at a shorebird site, report it to the Australasian Wader Studies Group at awsg.org.au. Your counts and sighting records submitted through eBird feed into this work as well, and they're worth doing carefully.

How (slightly) larger binoculars can help you see more  We had a talk in some previous blogs about how binocular and spotting scope magnifications are described and why this is important, especially for bird watching.  As a quick example, they take the form of: 8 x 42 Where the first number, in this case 8, is the magnification. The second number is the diameter of the front lens in mm. You'll also see spotting scopes and zoom binocular described something like: 20-60x80 This means the magnification "zooms" or ranges between 20 to 60 times, and the front lens is 80mm in diameter.  While we covered magnification for birders before, one question that gets asked by our birding customers here at BINTEL is "how important is the size of the lenses?" What main lenses in telescopes and binoculars actually do If you can get 8x25 and 8x42 sized binoculars and they both have 8x magnification, why do I need the bigger and more expensive pair? Many folks are under the impression that the front lenses in binoculars increase the size or magnify the view. That's true to an extent, but their real job is to collect all the light that falls on them, concentrate it and present it to your eyeballs. Apart from increasing the size of the image which we perceive as being "closer" to what we're observing, they also increase brightness and detail. I like to use the analogy of it being like a bucket being left out in the rain. The bigger the bucket, the more water you'll collect. Bigger optics collect more light and you'll see more. Exit pupil Ultimately the brightness of your view will depend on what's called the exit pupil. This is the size of the image that lands on your eyeball. It's given as the size of the binocular's main lens divided by the magnification. The exit pupil size for a pair of 8x42 binoculars would be 5.25mm, while for 8x50 it's 6.25mm. A 8x25 set of binoculars deliver an exit pupil of some 3.12mm. Your exit pupil is approx. 3-4mm during the day. Is will expand and open up as conditions get darker to around 5 to 7 mm.  (Another "benefit" of ageing is that the pupils in your eyes don't open up a much as they used....) During the day, an 8x25 pair of binoculars won't produce as bright and detailed image as an 8x42 (3.12mm vs 5.25mm) You'd notice the difference between them immediately.  There also won't be much difference in between the 8x42 and 8x50 binoculars (5.25mm vs 6.25mm exit pupil) during the day as your pupils will be only 3 to 4mm and simply won't be able to see the extra light. Ok, so what are the condition where larger binoculars are going to be give me better views? However, if you're planning on observing when the light isn't as bright such as early in the morning or dusk or even when weather conditions are poor, your wider pupils will pick up the additional light collected by larger, 50mm diameter binoculars. It's also handy when scanning around for what you'd like to observe.  New Nikon MONARCH M5 10x50 Binoculars It's worth mentioning that we're comparing binoculars of similar quality. The total amount of light let through and the level of detail that premium optics can deliver will be quite noticeable when compared to less expensive models.  On the down side, 50mm binocular are slightly heavier and this can be a consideration if you are hiking or travelling with a lot of other equipment in the field.  New Nikon PROSTAFF P7 12x50 Binoculars What's the difference between Nikon PROSTAFF P7 and the slightly more expensive Nikon MONARCH M5 binoculars? The PROSTAFF P7 offer clear, sharp viewing in a lightweight body. The MONARCH M5 adds in ED (Extra Dispersion) glass optics for even crisper images. Great for capturing fine details on our feathered friends. Bottom line: If you're mainly nature observing and birding during the day, an 8x42 or 10x42 pair of binoculars will work well. There will be a noticeable advantage in image quality, field of view and brightness compared to say 8x25 or 10x25 binoculars of similar optic quality. If you are planning on observing early in the morning or as it's getting dark in the evening (and this is often when some of most interesting wildlife behaviours occur) then upgrading your choice of viewing to an 8x50 or 10x50 size might be worth considering.  As always, there's no once size is best for XYZ activity.  That's why our expert team at BINTEL is always happy to chat at length about optics what would suit you and your lifestyle. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 13th March 2026    

The planets align this weekend. What you can easily see and what's a bit tricky. An excellent way to welcome autumn Lots of news and social media posts over the last couple of weeks about the "Parade of the Planets" on the 28th of February 2026. There's a grain of truth to this, but most of what we've seen online is simply incorrect and misleading.  First of all, yes there's several planets that can be seen in the early evening sky.  In theory over the coming few days these planets would be visible: Mercury Venus Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Plus, as an added bonus, the Moon Only Mars won't be able to be spotted. Unlike many of the AI images we've seen, the planets will not be neatly arranged in a line, evenly stretching across the sky.  Many social media posts have been featuring AI images. While this is great for clicks and likes, it's not what people are going to see. The last thing everyone here at BINTEL wants is for folks being disappointed with their astronomy experiences, especially if they're just starting.  These images below will give you an idea of what's in the sky this weekend and are generated by Stellarium. We'd encourage you to visit their website or download their app and use it to generate your own views of the night sky. The view from Sydney 28th February around 7.50pm local time Just after sunset, Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Saturn be in the sky, extremely low on the horizon and very hard to see given the glare from the setting Sun.  If you are going to try to see these planets through binoculars or a telescope, make sure the Sun has fully set to avoid accidentally looking at it directly. This could cause serious eye damage! The cross hatch in this image show's where the ice giant planet Neptune can be spotted around the same time.  Given how faint the planet is, and the extreme closeness to the horizon, we would suggest it would next to impossible to view for most people. The crosshatch shows where Uranus will be in the sky around 8.30pm tonight from in Sydney Jupiter will be a bright "star" close to the Moon and be visible most of the evening. A great sight through a telescope of any size and even binoculars will show its brightest moons either side of the planet. Using a telescope you could even spot the pale blue "dot" of the planet Uranus. Bottom line: While there will be a line-up of planets over the coming few nights, it will be very hard to see. This doesn't take away from this weekend's wonderful opportunity to catch Jupiter and the nearly full Moon in the evening sky.   Australia is helping to track our Universe in real time The Universe is constantly changing. Now we can see what's happening each night.  The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) at The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is really starting to produce some amazing results as it photographs the entire southern part of the sky each night, watching for changes both in our local Solar System and beyond. We've talked about this new observatory going back over a few years in a few blog posts and the first images released delighted the world last year. Now the telescope is commencing its main work, scanning the southern sky each night and spotting changes. Traditionally the Universe was thought of as never changing, that ran like a clock, with the occasional comet or shooting star thrown our way. Astronomers now know that it's instead intensely dynamic.  Discovering and cataloguing these changes is what the Vera C. Rubin Observatory does.  The amount of data being collected is also staggering. On a single night on the 26th of Feb 2026, Rubin discovered some 800,000 changes in the night sky. Once fully operational, it's expected this figure will climb into the millions. These changes include supernovae, variable stars, active galactic nuclei, and Solar System asteroids. It's estimated that the coming years Rubin will find some 6 million asteroids in the Solar System, 17 billion stars in the Milky Way and even take colour images of 20 billion galaxies. The task of handling this precious data is via a data broker called FINK. This is jointly run by Australia and France.  Dr. Anais Möller from Swinburne University in Melbourne heads up the FINK project in Australia.  Among the first 800,000 initial changes, Dr Möller’s team also identified about 100 supernova candidates. Alerts of cosmic events from FINK can used to trigger rapid follow-up observations on other facilities, like the ANU 2.3m telescope and the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales. Can amateur astronomers get involved? Yes. I had a chat with Dr Möller who gave me some hints on retrieving data from the FINK Portal for members of the BINTEL community: "For LSST, you can use the search bar in our portal and use the tag “in_tns” to find potential SN candidates reported. If you click there you will see the latest data received. Many of these objects will be quite faint given Rubin sensitivity but I am sure there will be interesting objects for amateurs and by itself the data is amazing!'   Artemis II rolls back into the shed. Earliest launch date is now April 2026 We've been keenly following the progress of Artemis II mission which will return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972. The Artemis program has suffered another setback which is going to cause another lengthy delay. We reported last week that the dress rehearsal for the mission had gone well, hydrogen leaks appeared to be resolved, and a launch date of early March seemed to be likely. Shortly after engineers discovered helium leaks in the Artemis II SLS Rocket. Helium is not used to fuel the rocket but rather is a way to flush out fuel lines.   Artemis II is now back in NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building undergoing further tests.  However.... NASA makes major announcements on when it will land humans on the Moon Breaking news this morning is that NASA have revamped the Artemis mission timeline and when it will return humans to the Moon's surface. Artemis III low Earth orbit test mission in 2027 After Artemis II gets off the ground, hopefully in the coming months, NASA will next fly and test its Moon landing hardware in low Earth orbit mission. For those of you familiar with the 1960's space program this is what was done in the 1969 Apollo 9 flight. Land on the Moon in 2028 NASA have now said they intend to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028 Land on the Moon at least once a year going forwards NASA will commence a steady program of a Lunar mission at least once a year. This is a developing story! You can read more about this new schedule and updates to the Artemis hardware at the NASA site here. Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 28th February 2026    

Filters for colour astronomy cameras Duo band filters to help with nebula imaging We chatted last week about the Olympus OM-3 ASTRO camera from OM System and touched on how this camera allows light from emission nebulae through, instead of blocking it like most DSRL/mirrorless cameras.  Dedicated colour astronomy cameras like those from ZWO capture the light wavelengths from emission nebula (called Hα or Hydrogen Alpha or sometimes just H-Alpha) as well as another part of the light spectrum where emission nebulae, planetary nebulae and supernova remnants shine. This is around two doubly-ionized oxygen lines (496 and 501nm) called OIII which is the blue-green region. While colour astronomy cameras see the light from these nebulae and much more in the Milky Way, they also pick up various kinds of light pollution. This can overwhelm the details from deep-sky objects. One way to get around this problem and largely capture light from nebulae is by using a filter that lets the light from H-Alpha and OIII while blocking light from other sources.  These are often called Duo Band filters as they let in light from just two main parts of the spectrum and do their best to keep the rest out. This graph shows what light  TMB Pro Series Duo-Band Nebula Imaging Filter lets through, with the two peaks around the Ha and OIII regions.  What does this mean for taking astro images? If you're interested in taking photos of nebulae and have either a DSLR/mirrorless or a colour astronomy camera, low cost duo band filters are a handy way to bring out the details and beauty of these wonderful parts of the night sky.  As they don't let light through from many sources of light pollution, they help those in the city or suburbs where artificial light and sky glow are a problem. Any downsides? Yes. You won't see as many stars themselves in images as much of their light is blocked out. They're also not going to produce ideal images for objects that produce light across a wide part of the light spectrum such as galaxies.  UV/IR Cut Filters for planetary images The problem: sometimes astro cameras can see too much! Another type of filter commonly used with colour astronomy cameras are UV/IR Cut Filters. These types of cameras are sensitive not only to the entire visible light spectrum but also to a little bit either side of the light that we can see.  This goes into the ultraviolet at one end, and in the infrared at the other. Infrared or IR especially focuses slightly different due to its longer wavelength and can wash out some the finer details on planets.  Light transmission from a TMB UV/IR Cut Imaging Filter showing how it sharply cuts off light from either end of the light spectrum to only through visible light IR also reduces the sharpness over entire image. With planets, we take lots of shorter exposures rather than longer ones in order to minimize the effects of atmospheric blurring and shakes. Image processing software then just uses the sharper frames and doesn't use the blurrier ones. Anything that helps this process adds to quality of the final image and these affordable filters are an ideal add-on if you intend to take photos of planets with a full colour of any sort.  Hubble spots a dark matter galaxy - say g'day to CDG-2  One of the darkest galaxies ever discovered Just about all galaxies shine quite brightly and we can view them either because of the light from their millions or even billions of stars. But how do we observe galaxies that are largely made up of dark matter that doesn't reflect or emit light? Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) astronomers have now discovered a galaxy some 300 million light years away called Candidate Dark Galaxy-2 (CDG-2) which seems to be comprised almost entirely of dark matter. How was this galaxy found? Using a combination of the Hubble Space Telescope, ESA’s Euclid space observatory, and the ground-based Subaru Telescope in Hawaii astronomers were able to isolate four globular clusters. These are ancient tightly bound star clusters, often found on the edges of galaxies. For example, our own Milky Way galaxy has over 150 known globular clusters, with some such as NGC 5139 or Omega Centauri being among the most spectacular objects in the sky for both visual observers and astrophotographers alike. For this new discovery known for now as CDG-2, the team headed up by David Li of the University of Toronto, Canada had worked on identifying very low surface brightness galaxies. The finding of just four globular clusters indicated that they were embedded in a larger galaxy that emitted almost no light. CGD-2 is the first galaxy found just by the observation of its globular clusters alone. The galaxy is estimated to have a total light output of approx. 1 million Sun-like stars with the 4 globular clusters providing about 16% of this. By comparison, the light put out from the Milky Way's globular clusters is about 0.1–0.2% of the entire galaxy. “This is the first galaxy detected solely through its globular cluster population,” said Dr. Li. “Under conservative assumptions, the four clusters represent the entire globular cluster population of CDG-2.” The globular clusters found in CDG-2 are not bright enough to be observed in your telescopes however. Read more here. Artemis fuelling test is a success Now aiming for a 6th of March 2026 launch Great news to wake up to this morning; the full loading and unloading of fuel into the SLS rocket for the Artemis II mission was a success! The leaks found during the previous testing that had caused the scrubbing of the launch earlier this month seem to have been largely resolved, although NASA admits there is still more work to do. The launch date for the four crew members to fly to the Moon will be NET (No earlier than) 6th March 2026. This means that it's been 19,426 days since humans last flew to the Moon and just over 13 days until we go again! Read more here. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 21st February 2026

OM SYSTEM OM-3 ASTRO - what's so special about it? There's been a LOT of interest in the news this week about the release of the new OM SYSTEM OM-3 ASTRO camera.  This is an astronomy version of their popular OM-3 mirrorless camera. It has much the same features of the OM-3 with some important changes.  There are several features in this new camera that make it of interest to astrophotographers, but we'll cove how it "sees" the night sky a bit differently to normal cameras. One thing that many people starting off with using DSLR or mirrorless cameras for astrophotography is what these cameras are built for compared to what they'll see when attached to a telescope or lens pointed at the night sky is quite different.  First of all, even through a large telescope, what the camera will see is quite dark. The second thing to consider is that the wavelengths of light where some of the most spectacular deep-sky objects can be best seen is often blocked by traditional cameras. There is a good reason for this! What's Hα or Hydrogen Alpha light? First up, a tiny bit of astrophysics. (I promise, this is quite easy!) The light we "see" from the Sun is normally called visible light. The light wavelengths go from deep purplish through to dull red. It's produced by the nuclear fusion processes that power the Sun and the wavelengths we see are only a small part of the light the Sun sends our way.  Some of these wavelengths are blocked by the atmosphere and don't reach the surface of the Earth to help protect us. Numerous animals can see light in different colours past the deep purplish ultra violet and into beyond the deep red near infrared that is simply not visible to human eyes. Other stars also produce wide spectrums of light. Astronomers can tell a lot about how a star works by carefully studying and analysing their light, but even a casual glance at stars will show them as being different colours and this is even more obvious in a telescope. There are large regions in the Milky Way where new stars are being formed.  These are vast clouds, mainly of hydrogen gas, that will eventually collapse, compress and produce the newest members of the stellar community. These clouds or nebula are also often stunning to observe and photograph.  Clouds of hydrogen gas no matter how large don't shine on their own.  They rely on light from nearby stars to reveal them to us here on Earth.* If they're close enough, they'll simply reflect the light they receive. These are called "reflection nebula" and the colour from these varies depending on what sort of star lights them up and what makes up the nebula. If a cloud of gas doesn't reflect the light but absorbs it, over time something has to give! What happens is that the atoms in the gas "drop back" to a lower energy level while sending out a light photon. This process always produces light of the same wavelength or colour regardless of the stars that the hydrogen in the nebula has absorbed energy from. The wavelength is 656.3nm and it's called  Hα or Hydrogen Alpha or sometimes just H-Alpha. This is in the deep red part of the visible spectrum.** Standard cameras block this part of the spectrum to help improve skin tones, natural light and to generally give photos a natural balance.  However, by doing so they block out some of the light from these wonderful emission nebulae.  They're interesting to astronomers to view because of their size and complexity, as well as being fascinating parts of the Universe for astrophotographers to capture.  It's not just the Milky Way either. Photos of distant galaxies also feature large patches of bright, pinkish red light. These are where star formation is taking place and we're seeing the Hydrogen Alpha emissions from these areas. One of the main features of the new OM SYSTEM OM-3 ASTRO camera is that it doesn't block Hα light in the same way the standard version does. Here are a couple of handy images released by the OM SYSTEM of the region around the famous Great Orion Nebula (M 42) to highlight the differences: Shot with OM-3M Zuiko Digital ED 75mm F1.8 40sec | F2.8 | ISO3200 Equatorial mount used Shot with OM-3 ASTRO M.Zuiko Digital ED 75mm F1.8 40sec | F2.8 | ISO3200 Equatorial mount used You can see right away the extra detail is in the image taken with the OM-3 ASTRO version! To give you an idea how much of the sky is revealed in Hydrogen Alpha, these frames span several times the size of the full Moon. You can find out more about this new astro camera here. NASA News: Non-biologic Processes Don’t Fully Explain Mars Organics We've chatted before about NASA announcing that their Perseverance Rover had found strong indications of past life on Mars and only last week we mentioned that due to budget cuts, NASA was leaving behind curated samples on the surface of Mars that could answer the question one way or another.  NASA's Curiosity Rover taking a selfie on Mars in 2018 In another tantalising but major announcement this week, NASA has stated that samples collected by its Curiosity Rover contained an abundance of organic materials that cannot be fully explained by non-biological processes.  Materials like these, often called "organics", are the building blocks for life and we see signs of them throughout in the Solar System and deep space. While they're produced by biological processes here on Earth, they can also be made through other non-life means. They are not signs of life in  themselves. NASA's Curiosity Rover had collected samples on Mars*** and analysed them using its onboard lab. The original conclusion was that there weren't produced by life, however further investigation of the amount and size of the organics found in mudstone called  "Cumberland" cannot be explained by known geological processes. It's a another case of "More studies about how organics break down on Mars need to be carried out before any final conclusions of life being behind the result ".  Read more at the NASA site here. Artemis II fixes are being tested Finally for this week, NASA has now fixed the hydrogen leaks spotted during the dress rehearsal for the Artemis II that delayed the launch of their Moon mission beyond the expected Feb 6th date. Further tests are underway, with another full rehearsal including loading and unloading of all propellants due soon. More here. Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 14th February 2026 *There are regions called dark nebula, which don't shine from the light of nearby stars. They in fact block out light from more distant stars. For example, on one side of Southern Cross on a dark, Moon free night, you might be able to make out even with your eyes a dark region that stands out from the bright Milky Way behind it.  **This is a very brief overview of how emission nebulae work! For more details, I'd suggest visiting this page at the COSMOS site at Swinburne University.  ***If you're interested, signs of organic molecules collected by Curiosity include: - Aliphatic hydrocarbons like decane, undecane, dodecane (largest, possibly fatty acid fragments). - Aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene and toluene. - Sulphur-bearing thiophenes. - Chlorinated compounds like chlorobenzene. - Methane and small chains (e.g., propane, butene    

Artemis II delayed due to hydrogen leaks during a dress rehearsal for launch I think everyone had their fingers (and possibly toes!) crossed that all would go well with the wet dress rehearsal by NASA earlier this week so the launch of the Artemis II mission to the Moon could proceed.  This entails loading the entire load of liquid hydrogen onto the rocket, checking systems and tanks, and then draining them again. Additional checks are then carried out to ensure that the Artemis II spacecraft will be certified safe to launch. After some initial delays, the NASA team identified a number of challenges, especially around the loading and storage of liquid hydrogen. Because of the need to evaluate the data and fix and issues, the earliest that they will be able to launch Artemis II is now March 2026.  NASA's administrator, Jared Isaacman, commented "As always, safety remains our top priority, for our astronauts, our workforce, our systems, and the public. As noted above, we will only launch when we believe we are as ready to undertake this historic mission. This is just the beginning. It marks the start of an Artemis program that will evolve to support repeated and affordable missions to the Moon, in line with President Trump’s national space policy. Getting this mission right means returning to the Moon to stay and a future to Artemis 100 and beyond." Read more here. Could there be further delays? Yes.  The first Artemis I rocket was plagued by delays, taken some seven wet dress rehearsals from March 2022 until it was finally launched in November 2022. There were several techniques developed by NASA to help overcome the various liquid hydrogen leaks and hopefully issues will be resolved more quickly this time around. John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis II Mission Management Team. said "When you’re dealing with hydrogen, it’s a small molecule. It’s highly energetic. We like it for that reason. And we do the best we can.” Stay tuned! Budget cuts sees Mars samples left on the planet's surface. A few months ago, NASA  announced that there were strong indications that their Perseverance Rover had found what looked like signs or biosignatures that life once existed on Mars. (You can read about their findings in a blog article here.) What was found wasn't truly definitive.  The science lab onboard Perseverance simply doesn't have the capabilities to perform the deep analysis to confirm whether or not these sample did in fact contain biosignatures. This wasn't something that took the scientists by surprise. They built into Perseverance the ability to leave behind samples collected for later retrieval by another spacecraft or possibly by human astronauts landing on the red planet. The rover has now drilled into the surface of Mars and from carefully selected areas, left sealed cannisters containing precious samples that might reveal whether or not life did indeed exist once on another planet. Illustration of the Perseverance Rover on the surface of Mars with samples of Martian soil. Image via NASA/JPL A large number of spacecraft have flown to Mars. Some crash landed into the surface such as Beagle or lost, some remaining in orbit and others successfully touching touch on the Martian surface. However, none have made the return trip from Mars back to Earth. The actual samples left on Mars by Perseverance. Image via NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS This Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission would be a major combined NASA/ESA undertaking requiring the development of a swag of new technologies and spacecraft.   You can read more about the MSR at the NASA website here. The ambitious and exciting program has run into a major snag. Due to budget cuts passed by the US Congress last month, the MSR program is effectively now dead in the water and will not proceed.  That's right. There are curated samples of the contain possible biosignatures ready for collection and will now be left to collect (Martian) dust as there are not the funds to go there and retrieve them. More here. Sydney University Student reverse engineers cosmic dust in a lab It was great to see the amount of press from all parts of the world that Sydney University PhD student, Linda Losurdo, has received this week for her working on synthesising cosmic dust.  Linda Losurdo at the laboratory Sydney University Cosmic dust is abundant across the Universe and used to be a bit of a pain for astronomers as vast clouds of cosmic dust obscured some distant objects in visible light. Since the development of infrared astronomy, the importance of cosmic dust in the complex history of the Universe and even for the development of life is being better understood. While the Earth is constantly being bombarded by cosmic dust much of it burns up in the upper atmosphere and that particles that do make it to the surface are next to impossible to find.  Ms. Losurdo used mix of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and acetylene and subjected them to intense electrical currents resulting a carbon rich dust that mimicked the cosmic dust and contained many of the organic compounds found throughout the Universe. “We no longer have to wait for an asteroid or comet to come to Earth to understand their histories,” Ms Losurdo said. “You can build analogue environments in the laboratory and reverse engineer their structure using the infrared fingerprints. “This can give us huge insight into how ‘carbonaceous cosmic dust’ can form in the plasma puffed out by giant, old stars or in cosmic nurseries where stars are being born and distribute these fascinating molecules that could be vital for life. “It’s like we have recreated a little bit of the Universe in a bottle in our lab.” You can read more about how this achieved by Ms. Losurdo and even close up images of cosmic dust made in the lab at the Sydney University news website here. SASI Astronomy Course Finally for this week, I was chuffed to be asked back by the Sutherland Astronomical Society (SASI) to be their first guest speaker this week for 2026 and it was a wonderful evening at their observatory down by the Georges River in Oyster Bay in southern Sydney. It was a great reminder that if you want to learn more about Astronomy, the Introduction to Practical Astronomy Course run by SASI in August. This multi-week course covers things like what's in the southern sky, setting up telescopes and understanding optics, intro to the Big Bang, new developments in astronomy and space plus lots more. You can find out more here. Highly recommended! Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 7th February 2026

Artemis II in on the launch pad. What's next? NASA's Artemis II mission took another major step forward this week as its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket with the Orion crew capsule arrived at Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  NASA has a range of launch dates from the 6th of February onwards available for launch. Artemis II on its launch pad. Image via NASA/Keegan Barber Assuming this mission is a success, with the crew of four astronauts looping around the Moon and returning safely after their 10-day spaceflight, when does NASA intend to land humans on the Moon again? Artemis III. This next Lunar mission planned by NASA is Artemis III. This aims to return humans to the Moon's surface, something that NASA last achieved in December 1972. It will land two astronauts to a region near the Moon's south pole for a period of about a week ,while two others will remain in orbit. A number of spacewalks on the Lunar surface are planned. The reason the south pole is a destination for both Artemis III and robotic landers to explore is that that water has been discovered in craters hidden from sunlight. This is a valuable resource for extended Lunar stays. The original plan was for astronauts to land on the Moon using the SpaceX Starship HLS (Human Landing System). This is a "Lunar Lander" version of the SpaceX Starship. Starship HLS.  Image via SpaceX Given the  ongoing issues with the Starship program NASA has been investigating other commercial suppliers the landing craft for Artemis III. Refuelling in-orbit  Artemis and other programs are aiming for more permanent human presence on the Moon's surface. This will entail not just landing and returning crews, but also the establishment of bases, laboratories and even power supplies. As an example, only a few days ago NASA and US Department of Energy announced their plans for nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030. Hoisting such large payloads out of Earth orbit and towards the Moon are going to require larger rockets and a major weight component of these is the fuel. Artemis III and future missions will have fuel brought up into Earth orbit by other rockets. They will then refuel by transferring propellants and oxidisers from one or more launches before heading to the Moon. Refuelling in orbit is something that hasn't been done before. The mechanics of moving large amounts of  volatile fluids between two vehicles in a vacuum in microgravity environment is something that needs to be mastered before Artemis III heads to the Moon. Ok, when? Despite all these challenges, Artemis III is scheduled for lift-off in 2028.  Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) The first potentially bright comet for 2026 has been discovered! Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) imaged by Alain Maury and Georges Attard on the 17th of January 2026 It was found on the 13th of January 2026 at a distance of approx. 308 million kms from the Sun. It's Kreutz sungrazer, which means it will pass close to the Sun. This new discovery is also likely a fragment of a much larger comet. Many of the other "Great Comets" have been sungrazing comets. Close approaches to the Sun can cause large amounts of the frozen gases and water from comets to evaporate or "sublimate" into space, resulting in one or even two cometary tails. These can sometimes be millions of kms long and from Earth, stretch across the night sky.  They can also break up entirely as they get close to the Sun. Perihelion, the closest approach to the Sun for C/2026 A1 is early April 2026. If it survives perihelion, this comet might be become a bright object in the night sky. We'll leave Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) for another week or two to see what further observations might say about it  Meanwhile, you can get current rise and set times for Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) for major Australian cities here.  Please note that it is still extremely faint.  It looks like Mars effects Earth's ice ages  What's a Milankovitch cycle? Scientists know that the Earth undergoes long periods of extreme cold weather with much warmer periods between. We're currently in a warmer, interglacial period called the Holocene. This started almost 12,000 years. The Holocene has seen the entire history of human society, civilisation, agriculture, technologies, art, sciences and more rise during this period.  Prior to this, our own species alongside a number of other human species did struggle to survive and thrive given the Earth's climate The next ice age is due in about 10,000 years for those keen on keeping their diary up to date*. Ice ages and interglacial periods occur due to a combination of factors including the eccentricities of the Earth's orbit and the slight movement or precession of the poles among others. These combine to produce Milankovitch cycles that describes the regular ice ages and periods of warmth between. They are the results of the small changes to the tilt and wobble of the Earth's orbit that occur over long periods. Even these tiny changes influence the amount of solar radiation that arrives on our planet producing warming and cooling eras. There are several Milankovitch cycles, such as that's an influence of Jupiter and Venus and takes around 430,000 years and this tracks with the spread of ice sheets. Astronomers have now found another influence on these long-term cycles: the planet Mars. While Mars is small and distant, it does seem to have a major influence in both the Earth's climate and even the evolution of life.  “I knew Mars had some effect on Earth, but I assumed it was tiny,” said Professor Richard Kane, professor of planetary astrophysics at University of California Riverside. “I’d thought its gravitational influence would be too small to easily observe within Earth’s geologic history. I kind of set out to check my own assumptions.” Professor Kane then ran a series of computer simulations of the inner Solar System's behaviour over a long term to check the variations of Earth's orbit and based on this, how much sunlight reaches our planet's surface. The 430,000 year cycle stayed no matter the involvement of Mars in these simulations. However, when Mars was removed, one cycle that takes 100,000 years and another longer 2.3 million cycle disappeared entirely. “When you remove Mars, those cycles vanish,” Kane said. “And if you increase the mass of Mars, they get shorter and shorter because Mars is having a bigger effect.” Climate has a long term impact the spread and development of animal and plant species humans.  “Without Mars, Earth’s orbit would be missing major climate cycles,” Kane added. “What would humans and other animals even look like if Mars weren’t there?” More here. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 24th January 2026 *There's a non-zero chance that climate change brought on by human greenhouse gas emissions will kick the can down the road for the next ice age. It's "due" to begin sometime in the next 10,000 years when the Holocene ends, however there's a lot of debate as to when this will happen, or even if it will happen on human timescales.