2007-06-16

Daylight Occultation of Venus

Next Monday there will be a daylight occultation of Venus by the Moon. Details of the event can be found over on the SPA website.

I hope to try and observe this. Having managed to observe the recent occultation of Saturn I'd love to have another occultation in my observing logs.

However, I foresee two problems with this. The first is that, being a daylight occultation, I'll still be working. I can probably take some time off but I can never be sure if something is going to crop up. The other problem is the weather. According the the Met Office Monday, around here, is going to be cloudy, probably with rain.

For those of you who won't be able to observe this, either due to work, weather or just simply being on the wrong part of the planet: Peter Grego is planning a live webcast of the event if he's lucky enough to have clear skies.

2007-06-06

Blame it on the Moon

According to an article on the BBC website:

Extra police officers are to patrol the streets of Brighton on nights when there is a full moon.
This is going to happen after
Insp Andy Parr ... compared crime statistics for Brighton and Hove with lunar graphs to discover the trend.
and, apparently, he thinks he's found one.

It'd be interesting to see what he actually found, especially given that there seems to be a lack of evidence of any real correlation.

From my point of view it's tempting to imagine that more people will hit the streets when the Moon is full thanks to the extra light. And, of course, more people, especially if it's more people with a few drinks inside them, could cause an increase in incidents. But, if that's the case, wouldn't it make more sense to increase policing during many of the weeks around the summer solstice when, in most of the UK anyway, it never really gets that dark anyway?

I do like this bit though (emphasis is mine):
It follows research by the Sussex force which concluded there was a rise in violent incidents when the moon was full - and also on paydays.

2007-06-04

BBC Britain in Pictures

The BBC are currently collecting photographs via a Flickr group for a gallery as part of their How We Built Britain series.

I've submitted a few photographs and have also been enjoying looking at what others have been submitting. However, one thing struck me. There seem to be very few photographs of buildings related to astronomy. I've submitted one of the 36 Inch Telescope at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, and I notice that Tim has submitted one of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh.

Other than that I've not noticed any others relating to astronomy (it could be that I've just not found them yet).

Anyone out there on Flickr who has images of British buildings that relate to astronomy? Fancy adding to the gallery?