Amateur astronomy in Cheltenham, Gloucester and environs
Members enjoyed Bob Mizon’s talk last month – ten targets for light polluted astronomers. In case you did not manage to remember them all – these are the ten targets:
Congratulations to Sally Bywater and Bill Beere, winners of the Society awards which were presented at the July meeting of the Society.
Sally was presented with the Robin Townley trophy (for contribution to the work of the Society), and Bill with the Dan Turton trophy for best astro-photograph (considering the equipment available for use).
The July/August issue of the society newsletter Mercury is now available for download. Choose the Members | Downloads page.
Note the password for access has changed. If you have renewed your membership you will have received an email with the new password.
Also available for download on this page is the latest FAS Newsletter.
It was a mixture of Sun and clouds at this years Cheltenham Science Festival.
A couple of lunch-time solar viewing sessions during the week were followed by a very sunny Saturday – Fun Day – where a large number of visitors came to view the Sun by projection and in H-Alpha scopes.
Sadly our Friday night ‘Star Party’ was clouded out, but we had a lot of optimistic visitors to chat with, but sadly no stars or planets to be seen.
Here are a few pics….
Last night (or this morning to be precise) a splendid display of noctilucent clouds was observed from Gloucestershire.
Cotswold AS member James Weightman captured this image from Cirencester. The bright star visible is Capella.
Details:
Lat 51.7N Long 1.9W
Time: 2013/06/03 2:00UT
Az 14 Alt 9 (by ref to Capella at this time)
Photo Canon EOS 7D + 85mm lens @ f/1.2; 0.3secs ISO 640; 2 adjacent photos merged using Photoshop.
Tony Ireland managed to capture the triple conjunction of Mercury, Venus and Jupiter shortly after the sun set on May 26th.
Members can now download the May/June issue of the Society magazine, Mercury, using the Members | Downloads page.
An excellent bumper edition – many thanks to Rik and all the contributors.
Mixed reports have been coming in from members who were trying to see comet C2011 L4 PanSTARRS on Wednesday March 13th.
Much of the county had fairly clear evening skies, though some low cloud and haze on the western horizon made things difficult.
Update: Picture from Ian Sibley taken at the SGL 8 astro-camp on 13th March.
The March/April issue of the society magazine Mercury is now available for members to download using the Members|Downloads page.