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The Leonid meteor show peeks on the evening of the 17th/18th of November. You’d best wait till the early hours when the Moon is out of the way (Moonset is 1:22 GMT on the morning of the 18th).

Clear skies.

The planet is Venus is visible in the early morning throughout the month of November. It will be highest at the end of the month. Over this time period it will slowly grow from a thin crescent (8.4% of the disk illuminated) 54.4” in angular diameter to a thicker crescent (25% illumination) and a smaller angular diameter of 41.2”. It gets smaller because the planet is getting further away from the Earth as it moves around the Sun.

Clear skies.

There is NO observing tonight (5/11).

If you want a copy of the slides from Own’s talk on Comets that he gave at last nights (22/10) beginners meeting, you can download them as a PDF from here.

Clear skies

This year the Orinids meteor shower peaks in the predawn skies of October 2st. Orion will be in the south around 4:30am BST an hour after the Moon has set and several hours before Sunrise. The meteors can appear in any part of the sky, but if you trace them back they will appear to originate from the constellation of Orion. For the best views look to the sky about 45 degrees on either side of the constellation from a dark sky location.

The meteors are caused by the Earth moving through the trail of debris left by Comet Halley.

Clear skies

The Draconids meteor show peaks on the evening of Monday 8th October. See below for a sky chart. The radiant is in the West North West, the best time to look being in the early evening, after 8:30pm BST.

The Draconids are the result of debris from comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner which will pass close to the Seagull Nebula in the early hours of Tuesday morning, a great photo opportunity.

Clear skies.

Well the season has gotten off to a good start, the first observing session scheduled for the year and we are not clouded off as usual!

The new site seemed to be as good, if not better than our old site, slightly less light pollution from Abingdon, but possibly affected by the car lights a little more (if I am to be picky), not as good view to the West but much better to the East and North from the end of the car park we Observed from.

There was 8 of us altogether with 5 telescopes and several pairs of binoculars.

Trevor with his 5” refractor, Keith and Jason both had 8” Celestron Edge HD scopes, Graham had a Celestron C90 and I took my 6” RC. Cristina also had her 15 x 70 Celestron binoculars.

We started off looking at Saturn which was only visible for a few minutes before dipping below some trees to our south west. The rings are in a favourable position at the moment, giving us a lovely view (even if it was only for a few minutes).

Next target was mars, although very bright, it was not a particularly impressive view.

We then attempted to go through some the Deep Sky list that was in the September Space Watch, plus a few others.

M13 Globular Cluster in Hercules, M15 GC in Pegasus and M2 GC in Aquarius.

The Veil Nebula through Trevor’s refractor with an Oxygen 3 filter.

M27 The Dumbbell Planetary Nebula in Vulpecula

M31 Andromeda Galaxy and its 2 companion galaxies M32 and M110

M81 and M82 Bodes Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy in Ursa Major

M45 The Pleiades, Open Cluster

NGC 869 and NGC 884 The Double Cluster in Perseus

And another Galaxy that Trevor showed us, that I cant remember the name of (but I will edit it in to the report later and no one will be any the wiser 😉)

Altogether it was a very enjoyable evening, clear skies for the duration, lots to look at and nice to get a look through some different scopes and eye pieces.

Hope to see more of you at the next one.

Clear skies

We WILL be observing tonight from 8pm at the Frillford Heath golf driving range in Tubney. Click here for directions and a map.

Clear skies.

One for the early risers, the Moon will be less than 2 degrees from M44, the Beehive cluster in Cancer in the early hours of Thursday 4th October. Closest approach is around 6am BST.

Unfortunately comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner will probably be lost in the pre dawn sky and glow from the Moon.

Clear Skies

There is NO observing tonight.