The latest issue of South Africa’s ‘Nightfall’ astronomy journal is out

The newest issue of South Africa’s Nightfall journal has just been released and is available here.

Nightfall is breaking new trail with this issue. The page layouts are a complete overhaul of the look-&-feel of what an astronomy publication can look like. There are dozens of videos and astrophysical sims embedded in the pages whose links are all in the light blue cyan color. Click on any blue link and a video pops off the page and plays. Click it closed and you are back on the page where you started. It’s a way to make astronomy come alive on a static page.

I’m very keen to work with DSF astronomers to combine your observational skills with the astrophysics that underlies them to produce articles that both edify and delight. Examples are Martin Heigan’s H-alpha images of the LMC (p.47), the article “A Heavily Reddened Cluster in Ara” (Westerlund 1 on p.81), and “From Blobular to Globular in 100 Million Years” (p.99), about the three super star clusters in our Galaxy, Westerlund 1 & 2, and NGC 3603. While they can be seen with apertures of 8 inches, Nighfall shows what happens when observation & astrophysics get together for a chat.

I invite article pitches from any of you who have a special interest in an object whose astrophysical properties most readers won’t otherwise know.

Show-&-tell on the grand scale. Write me at <assa.nighfall@gmail.com>.

=Doug Bullis, Grahamstown, S Africa