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It's been a hectic couple of weeks since I got back from the Christmas break, planning our department's involvement in the major BBC Stargazing Event at the Spinnaker Tower (a flagship event for the BBC South region). But it all went well last night and despite the clouds we're all left with a buzz about stargazing in Portsmouth. I made a Storify collection of tweets about the event . [<a href="http://storify.com/KarenLMasters/bbc-stargazing-live-at-spinnaker-tower" target="_blank">View the story "BBC Stargazing LIVE at Spinnaker Tower" on Storify</a>]

I suspect with all the excitement of Stargazing LIVE happening next week in the UK, there's going to be a lot of questions/advice floating around about astronomy smart phone Aps. I'm not going to claim this is a comprehensive review or anything like that, but I thought it might be helpful for me to give my list of my favourite free iPhone/iPad Aps for astronomy. I have no commercial interests here (they're all free anyway) and only in the case of the Galaxy Zoo and LookUP Aps do I have any other link to the developers. 1. Daylight This simple Ap is probably the one I use the most. It just tells you when sunrise and sunset will happen at your location. 2. Planets This is an Ap to impress your non astronomy friends with. "Sky 3D" works impressively well to show you what's up in the sky in the direction you point your screen. You can also explore 3D globes of all the planets (including ours with the current sunlight/darkness displayed), look at a traditional 2D ...

A beautiful 5 pointed star made from fractals.   Another question I answered during my time with Curious? Ask an Astronomer at Cornell: Why do People Draw Stars with Five Points? has recently been translated into Romanian.   (Also see Wikipedia entry on 5 pointed stars , which I don't think existed when I wrote the post).