I am very pleased to finally announce my Big News: the Bad Astronomy Blog is now a part of Discover Magazine Blogs.

Even more bad news under the save astronomy banner: The Times is running a story today suggesting that the famous telescope at Jodrell Bank faces closure.

I'd gathered from the list of possible cuts on the Save Astronomy website that Merlin was under threat but I hadn't even considered the idea that this might mean that the Lovell Telescope itself would be under threat.

This whole STFC nonsense was depressing to start with, it's almost impossible for me to find the right word to describe my mood now.
Is this it? Has this country given up on physics and astronomy? Has this government now decided that it's really not worth the time or money? I disagree. I'd try and say why I disagree but there's little point when Nigel Hawkes at The Times has done a far better job...

In Galileo’s time, nighttime skies all over the world would have merited the darkest Bortle ranking, Class 1. Today, the sky above New York City is Class 9, at the other extreme of the scale, and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. The very darkest places in the continental United States today are almost never darker than Class 2, and are increasingly threatened. For someone standing on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on a moonless night, the brightest feature of the sky is not the Milky Way but the glow of Las Vegas, a hundred and seventy-five miles away. To see skies truly comparable to those which Galileo knew, you would have to travel to such places as the Australian outback and the mountains of Peru.