Society for Popular Astronomy

Thanks, Brian.

I have just changed my email address, but I would like to continue getting the SPA news reports. Do I need to do anything here, or will they be automatically sent to my new email address?

I remember when he asked me to write an article for Popular Astronomy (on satellite observing) many years ago, and that was followed by a handful of book reviews. Very sad news

Seriously though, why at this point in time does Stephen Hawking regard interstellar travel as an urgent matter? Surely, along with other prominent people in the scientific community, he should be urging an end to the fouling of the nest. The first priority is to treat our planet with respect. Mayb...

I managed to see the sunspot, but with no support for my 8x30 monocular, the image of the Sun was dancing around too much for me to see Mercury

Everything went well in the North-West for the Venus transit. A small refractor was used, capped with a BAADER solar filter.

I simply used a Solar Eclipse viewer (a decent CE certified one), and the "black dot" was very easy to see.

I have never seen Mercury, so this would be a good time to correct that. The transit of Venus on 2004 June 8 was easily observed from my home town of Ulverston.

Did anyone see the Sky at Night episode "Planet 9 from Outer Space"? That was really interesting. I knew about the similarity between the alignment and inclination of the orbits of Sedna, 2012 VP113 etc, but I wasn't aware that the complex simulations also predicted another set of orbits i...

It's quite interesting to note that current simulations seem to indicate that there was a fifth giant planet that was ejected from the Solar System (probably by Jupiter) soon after planetary formation. I had assumed that it was gravitationally kicked from the Sun's grasp completely, but that might n...

Very interesting news indeed. IMO, the discovery of a new major planet in the Solar System would be the astronomical find of the century!

The density of Europa (3.01) is less than Earth's Moon (3.34). With respect to the four Galilean satellites, only Io (3.50) has a density greater than our Moon.

Does anyone know if Yuri is still actively developing Halley? I tried to contact him a month ago by sending a message on the Halley website, but I have not had a response. It has been three years since he updated the software....

It was cloudy in Ulverston, but amazingly the cloud thinned several times at the exact location of the Sun and Moon! If I was a religious man, I would say that God was doing me a favour!! :) I first saw it at around 8:45 AM when the Moon had taken a small chunk out of the Sun. This was followed by 9...

The two filters I have are CE Stanford Solar Viewers, with an optical density of 5.5.

I still have two solar viewers (dark strips of plastic to safely observe the Sun through) that were given to us by the hotel where we were staying for the 1999 August 11 eclipse. Sadly, I never got to see the totally eclipsed Sun in the sky (due to cloud), but being completely immersed in the Moon's...