Society for Popular Astronomy

The bbc.co.uk/weather website will give specific times for your local town

My astronomical society SEKAS did our annual Perseid meteor watch and BBQ last nite from our observing field outside Canterbury. Cloud was only occasionally broken but gave the opportunity to show new and young members Jupiter, m57, m13 etc. After midnight we had total clear skies and saw all the na...

My father pointed out Orion's belt to me when I was about 7 (early 1960's) when we lived in Worcester Park, Surrey. Light pollution was minimal in those days and when we moved to Kent a couple of years later the sky was even better. So I was bought a 3" refractor on a wooden tripod for £5 7s 6d...

clear skies in kent, low full moon so one last go at the comet

final call for McNaught here in kent. Clear nite but moon gives blue horizon to SW and also blue to N. Comet low now and undetectable by me thro bins. Capella reasonably bright but too much diffuse lite to pick it out. Well pleased I looked a few days ago an well done to pete lawrence and all other ...

final call for McNaught here in kent. Clear nite but moon gives blue horizon to SW and also blue to N. Comet low now and undetectable by me thro bins. Capella reasonably bright but too much diffuse lite to pick it out. Well pleased I looked a few days ago an well done to pete lawrence and all other ...

go for it tonite colin. Clear skies here in kent but moon an issue. I am sure u will c it with bins at midnight and thereafter. Approx 17 deg alt imho 4 deg above and to the north of Capella

Saw the comet this morning between 0010 & 0040 BST aprox 4 deg vertically above Capella giving an altitude of 15 deg in my estimate. Despite having intermittent high cloud moving thro the comet was visible through it as a fuzzy blob in 10x50 binos. Then using 80mm f5 refractor with 15mm ep gave ...

You have an excellent eye for detail and your skill is greatly envied. Visual drawings are prefered by some of my astro club members rather than photography. They tend to do drawings of Mars in the main so not as inspirational as yourself

Good views of both with the naked eye here in East Kent from 7.55 pm onwards, some 20 mins after sunset. Clear gibbous appearance to both planets through 80mm refractor at x80 mag, although a lot of atmospheric wobble as one would expect after todays weather. Images taken by Canon Powershot IS digit...

I looked at Mars last night thro my 8" Meade SCT in lovely crisp low humidity below freezing conditions. The point is that you need to take time acclimatizing to the darkness as I had to look for over 30 secs in order to see the darker surface areas and the glare of the polar cap. I was trackin...

You could always try some medium transmission colour filters, yellow/green/blue to enhance surface features

Global warming is just another state attempt to scare the people and con more money out of them. If u can scare the population then u have control. Look how pathetic other scaremongering has been such as AIDS, Millenium bug, BSE, Bird flu, swine flu etc.

Pardon my ignorance, but how is it possible to show mag16 stars with an 80mm refractor? I thought limiting magnitude was about 13 if you use a magnifiaction near the x160 limit of an 80mm refractor.

One of these went on e-bay for £510 last week so perhaps you will get more £ that way