Sky and space notes
30 May, 2017
Arthur Davis’ June 2017 Sky notes and sky chart
29 May, 2017
May 2017 meeting
18 May, 2017
Another great meeting with an excellent speaker in Dan Oakley, Lead Ranger of the South Downs National Park Dark Sky Reserve. Dan’s lively presentation gave us a good overview of the park and what it took to achieve its Dark Sky status. Meeting the criteria of the International Dark –Sky Association was no mean feat! Dan also discussed many issues relating to good and bad lighting practice generally. Thanks Dan, your talk was much enjoyed and was most instructive.
Bob Mizon’s Object of the month was the strange NGC 6745 in Lyra This is a 10 billion year old galaxy over 200 million light years away that has been disrupted by a another passing galaxy causing massive new star formation. Some object!
After our refreshment break, Arthur Davis’ Constellation of the month was Sagitarius, filled with deep sky objects. Arthur highlighted the galaxies M8 and M20.
Bill Reed shared some of his images including Comet Johnson, M 13, a solar prominence and a short clip of solar surface activity. All of course up to the high standard we’ve come to expect from Bill.
Pete Adshead’s account of his occasional struggles with clouds to get his deep sky imaging done, rang bells with all who have tried. But he also shared with us in his usual clear and entertaining style, how he finally found and imaged M98 in the Coma Cluster.
Many thanks to Zena, and her merry band for providing and serving our refreshments and to all who again volunteered in the kitchen and with clearing away.
Next month Steve Tonkin will be warning us of ‘Ten ways in which the Universe tries to kill us’. Hope we survive to hear the talk!!
See you on June 21st
Adrian Zielonka’s May ’17 Space and Astro notes
24 April, 2017
Adrian Zielonka’s Space and Astro notes for May ‘17
Comet Tuttle 2nd May 10.pm
Comet Tuttle 2nd May 10pm enlarged view
Comet Johnson 31 May 10.30 pm
April meeting
There was a great turnout for our April meeting!
Unfortunately Bob Mizon was unable to give his talk, so many thanks to Paul Bennett, Ambassador for the Lunar One Mission (LM1) for taking his place.
The object of LM1 is to land a craft on the South Pole of the moon to do science in support of future human habitation. A major spinoff from the project is in education particularly in the STEM subjects. The mission also intends to remove a core sample from the landing site and to archive material contributed by ‘earthlings’ at the site. See https://lunarmissionone.com/ for further details on how get involved.
After the break, Arthur Davis presented Coma Berenices as his ‘Constellation of the month’ and identified interesting objects including M53, M64, M100 and the Coma cluster.
Bud Budzynski described the superb lunar images he showed as his ‘best ever’. If you’ve ever seen his previous shots you would understand how good these were. Awesome! Great work, Bud.
Martyn Pryce’s image of M81, M82 and NGC 3077 was excellent, and as a refreshing change, he shared with us a great shot of a double rainbow taken in Merriott. If this is an example, we should pay more attention to the atmospheric phenomena of our own planet! It would be nice to see some more of this type of shot.
Very many thanks to all who helped at the meeting and especially to the ‘kitchen crew’ who had extra work to do because of a larger than usual attendance.
Thanks too to Zena and Mike for getting our speaker to and from the meeting.
Next month Dan Oakley’s talk will be ‘Dark Skies’. South Downs National Park and beyond. Hope to see you there.
Programme change alert!
13 April, 2017
Just to let you know that Bob Mizon won’t be able to do his talk as scheduled. In his place will be Paul Bennett, Ambassador for the Lunar Mission One project. Further details of this project can be found at: LunarMissionOne.com.
See you next Wednesday!
Arthur Davis’ April Sky notes and chart
19 March, 2017