Cotswold Astronomical Society

Sungazing LIVE

On Saturday 21st Jan and Sunday 22nd a number of Cotswold Astronomical Society members gathered with solar viewing equipment to show the Sun to members of the public as part of BBC Stargazing Live, at Imperial Gardens, Cheltenham.

Although the weather was pretty uncooperative, quite a few were able to get a good view on the Sunday, though on the Saturday there was only the briefest of clear spell.

Although we did not really count visitors, we probably had around 30 to 40 each day.

Click on Read More to see some more pictures of the event.

Mercury January/February 2012

The January/February issue of Mercury is now available for download from the Members Only area of the website.

January/February 2012 Mercury ... (2.2MB) (password required for download)

Contents include:

Coordinator’s Report
Stargazing at Newent School
Pallas & Jupiter
Lunar Images
From the archives
Imaging Jupiter
Dates For Your Diary
BAA Deep Sky Meeting
Observing evening at Prescott

You can also download from the Members Only area, Tony Ireland's Sky Diary for 2012.

Sky Diary 2012 ... (0.4MB) (password required for download)

Total Eclipse of the Moon - 10th December 2011

CAS member James Weightman managed to capture these images of the tail end of the eclipse on Saturday 10th December from near Cirencester. Canon DSLR and 400mm lens.

(click on the images to see a bigger view).

Christmas Meeting

At the Christmas meeting this Saturday, Alan Jordan will be giving us an update on the Somerset scale model of the solar system and Peter Cadogan will be running a special astronomy quiz, so please equip yourself with a pencil. Don't worry if you are new to astronomy, because this will be a team event.

As you may or may not know, we have party food at the Christmas meeting instead of just the usual tea/coffee and biscuits, so if you are able to bring a little something along for this, it would be much appreciated.

After supper, if there is time, Mark Gibbons is going to tell us about the Allen Telescope Array, which sounds interesting.

November's Speaker

Dr. David Whitehouse will be giving the talk at this weeks meeting (on Saturday 12th November), entitled "Space: The Next 50 Years".

David is a scientist, writer and broadcaster. He has a doctorate in Astrophysics from Jodrell Bank. Was BBC Science correspondent 1988 - 2006. He has won numerous awards as well as European Internet Journalist of the Year. The author of four books; The Moon:A Biography, The Sun:A Biography, Galileo, and One Small Step. He also has an asteroid named after him. He now writes for the Huffington Post.

BAA Beginners Workshop - Report & Pics

Well, we had a really good turn out for the CAS/BAA Back to Basics Begineers Meeting on Saturday 1st October.

We had around 80 at the meeting, and the Sun came out too - one of the hotest days of the year.

Talks and workshop sessions on Solar observing (Peter Meadows), Lunar observing (Martin Morgan-Taylor), Planets (David Arditti), and Astro-Imaging (Rik McRae) were complemented with a general overview and equipment talk by Callum Potter.

An excellent lunch kept everyone well nourished for the afternoon session - many thanks to the catering team for that, and the T&C team for refreshments throughout.

During the lunch break, solar H-Alpha scopes were set up outside and a number of sunspots and small prominances were seen.There was quite a bit of wispy and thicker stuff, though, so not the best of views possible through the scopes.

Click on the read more link to see a few photos (by Tony Ireland) from the day.

View the ISS

This week there are several evening passes of the International Space Station over Gloucestershire, which should be quite easy observe.

Martin Sinton took an image on Sunday 21st August when the ISS passed over around 21:46. Here is a cropped section, and if you click on the picture you will see the full image.

Here are some times for the rest of the week - these should be approximately right for Gloucestershire, but if you want details for your own specific location its best to use the website Heavens Above

Date	Mag	Start Time (BST)
23 Aug	-3.5	21:26:25
23 Aug	-1.6	23:02:32
24 Aug	-3.4	20:28:16
24 Aug	-3.2	22:04:20
25 Aug	-3.4	21:06:11
25 Aug	-1.6	22:42:25
26 Aug	-2.7	21:44:07
27 Aug	-3.2	20:45:53
27 Aug	-1.3	22:22:25
28 Aug	-2.0	21:23:53
29 Aug	-2.7	20:25:34
29 Aug	-0.8	22:02:52
30 Aug	-1.4	21:03:44
1 Sep	-0.7	20:43:50

Award Winners 2011

At the July meeting, this years award winners were presented with their trophies.

Rik McRae (left) was presented with the Dan Turton trophy for best astro-image (considering the equipment available for use).

Martin Sinton (right) was presented with the Robin Townley trophy for contribution to the work of the Society, and in particular for running events during Star Gazing Live, and observing evenings at Slimbridge WWT.

Congratulations to both.

Science Festival in Pictures

As part of this years Cheltenham Science Festival we arranged two observing evenings and safe solar viewing at the weekend.