Society for Popular Astronomy

There was a large display of NLC this morning from my location just South of London. I first saw it at at 02:07 UTC (Solar elevation - 10.13 degrees) and was still in progress at 02:46 UTC (Solar Elevation -6.78 degrees) when it was wiped out by dawn. It appeared to stretch for at least the NE to NW...

Geoff, You can have look for information on the observatory on The Astronomical Data system try the following link https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/p_=0&q=%20full%3A%22Four%20Marks%20Observatory%22&sort=date%20desc%2C%20bibcode%20desc You could also search for the people involved either in the '...

The European Astronomical Society were scheduled to hold their annual meeting in Leiden this year but have now gone virtual. The meeting will be held from 29th June to 3rd July 2020. As it is a virtual meeting the price has been reduced to 50 Euros per day or 80 Euros for the whole conference. For t...

The American Association of Variable Star Observers combined with the Society for Astronomical Sciences are holding a virtual symposium over 5 weekends starting on Saturday May 30th first weekend is free and $40 for the other 4 weekends. Be aware this uses different conference software to most other...

Since my last post the number of Astronomical Societies holding virtual meetings has increased rapidly so there is not room to list them here and it would soon be out of date. One of the interesting things is how wide the audience is for some of the talks - I was watching one last night where viewer...

A number of Astronomical Societies have moved their meetings online so are now open to all to watch and in some cases take part in. Nottingham AS are meeting tonight (2nd April 2020) at 20:00 Edinburgh AS are meeting tomorrow at 19:30 Brighton Astro are meeting on the 14th April at 19:30, interestin...

I thought you were going to mention the European Southern Observatory pointing their New Technology Telescope at the Sun during the Solar Eclipse ! A quick calculation shows that with a 3.5m telescope like the NTT the power concentrated into the detector would have been around 10kW if they had not m...

One interesting thing to do with a rainbow is to image it / view it through a polarising filter. At certain angles the rainbow dissapears completely showing the light is polarised. I am nor sure if the polarisation is the same all round the arc as the images I have where I experimented with a polari...

A couple of tips when watching the Video above. 1:play it in HD if possible 2: Slow the playback speed to 0.25 or slower if possible particually around 04:40 when the peak was predicted. 3: The image shows Alpha Mon highlighted with the Yellow Circle. The plate solve is not perfect due to the wide a...

If this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHs7ljhQWPA&feature=youtu.be is to be beleived thare were some observed from Tenerife. Space weather.com says 90 but a lot I see seem to be coming from directions other than from the Alpha Mon radiant which is towards the lower left of the images. Around...

Cloudy & raing here in Carshalton for the Alpha Monocerotids this morning. There seemed to be an increase in the frequency of meteors on the IOW2 meteor 'radar' a bit after the predicted peak. Difficult to be sure but I would have said around 04:50UTC. At one stage there were 7 echos in 2 minutes. T...

There were a few gaps in the clouds before the Alpha Monocerotids 2019 this morning but by 04:00 it was cloudly & raining. Had to resort to looking and lisening to some of the Meteor Radars.

I observed the transit from Carshalton on the edge of London. Best described as Sunny Intervals. Used a Canon 70D with a 300mm telephoto lens and a Thousand Oaks solar filter. It was very difficult to focus. I am not sure if it was the solar filter confusing the auto-focus or else the turbulance fro...

I have also read they are fast & faint so dark sky will help a lot.

It has recently been reported that the ALPHA MONOCEROTIDS 2019 may have an outburst at 04:50 UTC on the 22nd November 2019. The dust trail that causes this shower is very narrow and it's position in uncertain as is the parent comet. P. Jenniskens, SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center; and E....