Paul Abel

Recent articles by Paul Abel

Paul's finished sketch of Jupiter. Credit: Paul Abel

How to draw Jupiter

Once the 9th planet in the Solar System, Pluto is now classified as a Kuiper Belt Object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Why Pluto is no longer a planet: the rise and fall of a Kuiper Belt Object

A crescent Venus. Credit: Pete Lawrence

Ashen light: the mystery of Venus’s dark-side glow

Maat Mons on Venus, as seen by the Magellan spacecraft. Simulated colour has been used. Credit: NASA/JPL

A guide to the mountains of Venus

Mag. -3.9 Venus appears 4.8° from a 6%-lit waxing crescent Mon on 28 December. Credit: Pete Lawrence

See Venus the ‘Evening Star’ in the night sky this month

An artist's illustration of New Horizons at Pluto. Credit: Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

What did New Horizons discover at Pluto?

Tools and materials required for variable star-watching. Credit: Paul Abel

Estimate the brightness of variable stars

Observe-record-geminids-01

Observe and record the Geminid meteor shower

In this comparison image the photo at the top was taken by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in 1995 and shows the spot at a diameter of just under 21 000km; the second down shows a 2009 WFC3 photo of the spot at a diameter of just under 18 000km; and the lowest shows the newest image from WFC3 taken in 2014 with the spot at its smallest yet, with diameter of just 16 000km.

How to measure Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Image Credit: Paul Whitfield, Pete Lawrence, Patrick Moore x 2, Paul Abel

How to observe and record the storms of Jupiter