Hi everyone,

Quick reminder that it’s our May meeting tomorrow night. There’ll be the usual round-up of space and astronomy news (some GORGEOUS images of Saturn this month) and a look at what’s in the sky at the moment, and a report on our recent Society trip to Alston Observatory too. I’m sure someone will have some photos from the MoonWatch to show as well. And we have a very special guest speaker this month, so please come along and support them… (please note: our guest speaker begins his talk at 8pm, the meeting begins at 7pm as usual!)

The next public observing event being held by the Society is a “MoonWatch”, at the Brewery Arts Centre this coming Friday May 5th, starting at 8pm. Members of the EAS will have telescopes set up in the gardens of the Brewery Arts Centre to show people the Moon. which will be shining close to Jupiter that evening.

The event is free, and members of the public are invited to bring along their own equipment – cameras, binoculars and telescopes – to join in the fun!

Quick reminder – there’s no meeting tomorrow night as it’s Bank Holiday. Back NEXT Monday with lots of news and a great guest speaker..!

Quick reminder to all members that the Society has a Facebook page, so if you’re a user of social media you can chat there about things happening the night sky and keep in touch with what the Society is up to, too.

Here’s a link to the page:  https://www.facebook.com/EddingtonAstroSocOfKendal  :

On Monday night around a dozen members of the Eddington AS travelled down to Alston Observatory, near Preston, for a very enjoyable evening spent listening to a talk on our place in the universe, looking at a lovely old “vintage” telescope and looking through a superb 28″ telescope! Full report at the next meeting, with lots of photos. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who came along, and a special thanks to David Glass for arranging the evening for us!

About a dozen EAS enthusiasts turned out on Thursday for what will probably be the last observing evening of this season.  A little haze high in the sky meant that there was a slight background wash making faint objects more challenging, but we still bagged a good set of observations.  

Orion offered final views of M42 (The Orion Nebula) nebula setting in the west, and we also took a long look at Betelgeuse (Alpha Orinonis) while observing individual stars including Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris), Castor (Alpha Geminorum) – a double separated by 90 light years or 5 arcsec viewed from Earth – and Pollox (Beta Geminorum).  

Open clusters were a feature of the evening, M35 in Gemini, M36 (“The Pinwheel”), M37 and M38 (“The Starfish”) in Auriga and M44 (“The Beehive”) in Cancer.

Galaxies M65 and M66, two of the “Leo Triplet”, were just visible in Leo, as were M81 and M82 in Ursa Major.

Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák was seen as a very challenging fuzzy spot in my 115mm refractor, as was nearby M97 (The Owl Nebula) used for comparison.

We finished with pretty good views of Jupiter and the four Gallilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

My sincere thanks go to all members who come and make these sessions a success. There is still room for improvement and I look forward to canvassing members’ views over the next few EAS meetings to see how we can make then even better.

Simon

Apologies to last night’s observers for predicting the two iridium satellites that failed to appear. Still not sure why but most probably the low angle, 16°. I ‘mistook’ on the direction – it was NE not NNE but you would have thought that was near enough for a -2.8 mag.

Everyone,

For those who weren’t at the March meeting – or who were but would like a reminder of the details – here’s some information about our Trip being planned for the evening of April 24th. Many thanks to Richard Rae for organising this. If you’re interested in going, please pass that interest on at the April meeting.

Thanks to Liz, Stella and Moira for coming along anyway! 🙂

Cross your fingers for clear skies this coming Friday night (March 3rd) because we are having another of our hugely popular “Moon Watch” nights at the Brewery Arts Centre!

As I write this the weather forecast isn’t very good, but as we all know they can change overnight, or just be plain wrong, so let’s just wait and see what happens. If you can see the Moon at or after 6.30pm on Friday night come down to the Brewery, where we’ll have our telescopes set out in the garden.

And what will you see? Well, the Moon will be just short of First Quarter, which is the very best time to look at it through a telescope (not Full Moon, as everyone seems to think) because that’s when the Moon’s jagged mountains and deep craters stand out from the surface most clearly.

On Friday night we’ll have a spectacular view of some of the Moon’s most famous features – weather permitting!

If you come good and early, before Venus drops behind the trees, we should also be able to show you the “Evening Star” through our telescopes – which is now looking like a beautiful thin crescent through telescopes – and the planets Mars and Uranus too, although they’ll just look like tiny stars.

Unfortunately the Space Station won’t be putting in an appearance during our MoonWatch, it’s not an evening object at the moment, but we should see a few other satellites drifting across the sky while we’re Moon-gazing.

The event is free, begins at 6.30pm, and will end around 9pm.