Central London SUNday - 2014 June 22

In late June last year I arranged an informal, fun-filled day for a group of fellow London amateur astronomers to observe the Sun with white light filters and hydrogen alpha solar telescopes in a London park and have a picnic. The day of the week I chose was, of course, a SUNday! It was a great success so I decided to repeat a similar solar observing day this Summer on Sunday June 22 as this date coincided with the first International SUNday.

Living in Central London I wanted the event to be held nearby so I named it the Central London SUN-day and decided again to hold it in Regent's Park, one of my favourite London green open space.

I invited my fellow Baker Street Irregular Astronomers to the day, as well as others through my FaceBook group 

I had mentioned my planned event to Tori Weaver, a BBCTV Sky At Night researcher, I met at the Brecon Beacon AstroCamp and later I was delighted to hear she had organised a TV crew and Pete Lawrence to attend my SUNday to film part of their July programme devoted to daytime astronomy and the brightest star. The four minute clip from the Sky At Night July programme is on their website.

The weather in London just prior to the SUNday was fine and warm and I had managed several enjoyable morning solar observing sessions with my Lunt LS60THa so I was delighted the Sun shone early on the SUnday morning. 

Approximately fifty turned up for the day with about a score of solar scopes and adapted binoculars.

Photo  by Eric Emms

Photo  by Eric Emms

Photo  by Eric Emms

The curious public were shown the Sun through white light and hydrogen alpha filters, picnics were consumed, astronomy (solar and other) was discussed and explained, many photos were taken and fun with a little solar education was had by all.

I shall be holding the next Central London SUN-day, again in Regent's Park, on 2015 June 21. I hope to see you there!

Canaries - first trip in 2014

Leaving the William Optics GT81 refractor and Lunt60THa solarscope back home in Central London (soon after their successful appearances at my Central London SUN-day solar observing and picnic in Regent’s Park) I took to the air and was soon reunited with my APM 100/800 LZOS refractor I keep caged in the Canaries. 

Photo by Raquel Chavez Garcia

The main idea for this trip was to observe a few more DSOs around the MW, particularly in the Scorpius and Sagittarius constellations. Of course, the Milky Way refuses to show itself in Central London, and at both 2014 astro-camps I’ve attended in Cwmdu, Brecon Beacons and Brighstone, Isle of Wight, the MW is not as glorious to view as in the southern latitudes of the Spanish islands off Morocco.

My APM was soon thrown on to my HEQ5Pro mount, also kept in the Canaries, and observing was had most nights of my ten day trip. I’m not much of an astro-photographer, granted I’ve uploaded a few lunar and solar snaps to my Flickr site in the past, but I much prefer photons from extraterrestrial objects on my retina not a CCD chip. The dark (very dark) skies experienced at my observing site above the clouds, dust and light at 2,300m thus were exploited as much as possible.

I had a list of DSO targets I wished to observe during my sessions; some of these were ones I had yet to view while the remainder were old favourites such as the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae.  I do enjoy seeing clusters, both globular and open, and it is a Canaries tradition for me to become reacquainted on my first night with that monster globular low in the south, invisible from the UK, Omega Centauri. I ogled it every night with both the APM and with binoculars and never tire of its beauty and size.  I was delighted that I did observe all I had wanted to see and was able to show some celestial favourites to a small group of friends and family on the volcano. 

Photo by Frank Kaemmerer

Saturn (admittedly past its best) seen by friends for the first time and the waxing Moon prior to setting early in later sessions were much admired by all.

Photo by Eric Emms

For the first time during my Canaries trip I was asked by a nearby hotel to bring my telescope to their attractive grounds to show a few celestial gems to a small number of their guests. 

Photo by Frank Kaemmerer

Feedback from all was positive so I shall be repeating an hotel ‘star-party’ when I return to the islands later in the year.

Jupiter: triple moon shadow transit

With my small refractor (WO GT-81) I enjoy observing Jupiter: its belts, zones, the GRS (the latter always looks a lighter grey to my retina) and the four Galilean moons. I've seen a few single and double transits of moons and shadows from my terrace in Central London ('EmmsTowers'). At the April AstroCamp in the Brecons, Wales I had fun observing a transit of Ganymede on Jupiter in clear BLUE skies through a friend's 16" bespoke Dobsonian - a first for me.

So when I learnt there will be a rare triple shadow transit occurring on June 03 beginning in daylight I was determined to have a crack at observing as much as can with my 'frac. At the critical time in the afternoon Jupiter will be in the western skies, a part of the heavens obscured by buildings at EmmsTowers so I've arranged for a few friends to join me to observe the event from Regent's Park.

 It will be fun to find Jupiter in blue skies and see what is on view.

AstroCamp Apr 2014

I'm always keen to attend AstroCamp held biannually in the dark skies of Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales. Being an urban stargazing I love to get under darker skies, whether of the Canaries, Isle of Wight and the Brecons.

Last month I attended the latest AstroCamp with the expectations of three dark nights around the April New Moon. The weather, always changeable in the UK, didn't cooperate, providing plenty of rain and cloud. But I did manage a few hours observing with my WO GT81 of a few DSOs I cannot perceive in Central London, namely a trio of galaxies in the Virgo galaxy 'realm' new to my retina, M49, M87 and M60.

During daylight hours I spent the few cloud free hours doing a spot of solar observing

Upper pic by Carol Grayson. Centre pic by Howard Cooper. Lower pic from BBC iPlayer

and demonstrating chromospheric features to others with my Lunt60HaT. Part of the May 2014 Sky At Night television programme was filmed at AstroCamp. The last photo is a brief shot from the show.

The next AstroCamp will be held September 20-23.

Jodrell Bank Telescope

2014Apr03 by Eric Emms

I visited Jodrell Bank as a member of a group organised by Friends of the Royal Astronomical Society, to see the famous Lovell Telescope, hear a talk from the Director Prof Simon Garrington and visit the Control Room of the observatory.

The dominant feature of The Jodrell Bank Observatory is of course the radio telescope, one of the world’s largest, known as the Lovell telescope

Walking up close to the telescope one is struck by its sheer size and the beauty of its design.

Notices scattered along the footpath tell you to switch off your mobile phones as signals would interfere with the radio signals collected and relate simple facts about the work of the telescope. 

The  Discovery Centre which receives thousands of visitors is home to exhibits and visual presentations describing basic astronomical concepts.

Prof Garrington’s illustrated talk described the present set-up of the observatory, its early work and its current importance as the organisational ‘hub’ of present national array of radio telescopes across England (e-Merlin) and in the future international radio astronomical research (SKA). 

The conclusion of our trip was a visit to the Control Room, where the BBC Stargazing Live TV programme is filmed. A brief illustrated talk by a resident radio- astronomer explained how radio signal data collected at the observatory are processed to produce a meaningful image of the target radio source to resolutions in the order of microarcseconds, as good as or better than the resolution seen in Hubble optical images.

Thanks to Marcus Hope of Friends of the RAS  for organising the trip.

Astronomy and Me: How I Started...Stopped...and Restarted.

It started for me with Apollo 8 and Patrick Moore.

Christmas 1968: your pre-teen author watching the BBC coverage of Apollo 8. On the screen was this strange looking man talking rapidly explaining why the mission was so important.

His words, still potent when seen and heard today, helped arouse the child’s interest in space and astronomy. I collected newspaper cuttings of the Apollo missions, glued them into a long-lost scrapbook and devoured all the astronomy books available from my local library, many written by Patrick. I well remember reading his 5^th edition of Amateur Astronomy.

My parents encouraged my interest: the first astronomy book I owned, received as Christmas present in late 1960s was Larousse Encyclopedia of Astronomy, a paperback edition in 1966. It was, effectively, a text-book of what was known in the mid 1960s, with emphasis on the Moon, planets and stellar composition.

I received another present from my parents, a small telescope with a table tripod: a cheap refractor. A toy in essence, but through it I could enjoy for the first time the splendour of the craters of the Moon; Saturn and its rings; and Jupiter and its moons.  A toy microscope was also purchased for me. Both presents and other educational toys triggered a life-long interest in sciences (little did the boy realise he would later spend a third a century looking at diamonds and precious stones through a rather different microscope: but that’s another story).

But I can’t recall watching the Sky at Night on a regular basis and as the public awareness of the Apollo programme diminished so did my curiosity in astronomy. ‘O’-levels, three science ‘A’-levels and an honours degree at King’s, London passed without much thoughts of astronomy. A subsequent career with precious stones in Hatton Garden, London eclipsed any interest I had for the heavens – perhaps I was too preoccupied with gems to bother with stars.

However the embers of astronomical interest smouldered occasionally; I recall staring at the many large (to me) telescopes seen through the large window of Telescope House in Farringdon Road, close to Hatton Garden, and casual glances at the Sky This Month diagrams and notes published monthly in national newspapers but certainly no observing since the time of the now long abandoned toy ‘scope. But I do remember being impressed by comet Hale-Bopp seen with my naked eyes hanging in the heavens when on business trip to Basel in April 1997 and explaining what a comet is to Swiss contacts.

After moving to Marylebone in the late 1990s, I would walk past a shop off Baker Street, 

glimpsing telescopes in the window and form a fancy of buying a ‘scope in the future for the time, if and when, I retired abroad. Little did I know then...

Perhaps you, too, do not think you share the so-called ‘passion’ evident in the amateurs you read about on-line, meet at astro-events or follow on social media. Take heart, a greater interest in astronomy can be reignited. For me, it happened on a walk in April 2011 when a curious incident in Regent’s Park occurred - I saw a poster on a notice-board.

On the spot, I decided to investigate...