EAS “SunWatch” Sat July 30th

Happy to report that the “SunWatch” held by the Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal yesterday was a great success! The weather was fantastic, there were half a dozen telescopes gathered in Kendal’s Abbot Hall Park, and the Sun boasted a lovely necklace of sunspots for our steady flow of visitors to look at – just about [...]

Book Review: “Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries” by Govert Schilling

I’m a big fan of “timeline” books. You know, the ones that give you a detailed timeline of events relating to a specific subject or topic, helping you track the development or evolution of ideas or technology or just let you take a trip through history, seeing how things have changed. The problem is, although [...]

Watching the Sun and Moon in Kendal…

The Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal is holding two free public observing events in the next week or so, and everyone is invited! First, this coming Saturday afternoon, we’ll be showing people the Sun at our “Sunwatch”…   We’ll have several telescopes on the Park set up to show people the Su, safely, either by [...]

re Vesta meteorites

I’ve had a few people asking me how scientists know that certain meteorites come from Vesta. Good question! See here: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/planets/vesta.php

Arrival at Vesta…

Huge celebrations at NASA this morning, when signals from the ion-propelled DAWN space probe confirmed it had entered orbit around the huge asteroid Vesta. Initially NASA shouted – well, Tweeted! – from the rooftops that this was an incredible achievement because DAWN was the first probe to go into orbit around an asteroid, but then, [...]

NLC seen again… :-)

Another very attractive display of noctilucent clouds seen over Kendal this morning…

NLC as they *should* be seen…

There was another very nice display of noctilucent clouds, or “NLC”, visible from Kendal and across parts of the UK the other morning (July 7/8th), and this time – no offense meant to my other camera, which has served me very well this past year or so – I had a *proper* camera to take [...]

Patience rewarded…

As many of you reading this will know, I’m not a religious person. In fact, there’s not a religious bone in my body (that I know of). If there was a God I’d have married Farrah Fawcett Majors when I was twelve, as I wanted to. That’s not to say I don’t have beliefs. I [...]

NLC seen from Kendal for second morning running…

…but, to be honest, after yesterday morning’s unbeLEEvable display, July 2nd’s was a ittle bit underwhelming. Maybe we were spoiled by that mega-display. It didn’t help that this morning’s was fainter, and half-hidden by haze, and shorter-lived. Still, any other morning I’d have been “woo-hoo!”ing happily as I clicked away with my camera – which [...]

NLC Spectacular!!!

For years – and I mean years – I’ve been jealous of the beautiful images of noctilucent clouds I’ve seen on the pages of astronomy magazines and on websites like Spaceweather.com. They have all been so gloriously detailed, so colourful, so rich! Frames filled to overflowing with electric-blue ripples, waves, whirls ands wirls of light, [...]