#Meteorwatch

Here's one for your diary:

Following on from the success of #moonwatch back in May this year (an event which attracted people such as Maggie Philbin, how cool is that?!), Newbury Astronomical Society, in association with IYA2009UK, are going to run #meteorwatch.

The event will happen on the night of the 11^th and 12^th of August, coinciding with the expected peak of the Perseids meteor shower.

The Twitter Meteorwatch will start at 21.30 BST on the 11th of August and will continue through to the evening of the 12th of August. Amateur and professional astronomers from the US and other countries are invited to join in and take over from the UK, when the sun comes up here, helping make the event run for over 24 hours and be truly international. The event will close in the UK, in the early hours of the 13th of August 2009.

See the main page for the event for more details, and be sure to follow @NewburyAS over on Twitter.

Now that I've got an Android phone, which runs a twitter client (twidroid), and now that I've got a laptop with a WiFi connection, I should be in a good position to take part. All being well, weather permitting, I'll be out in the garden, doing my best to add to #meteorwatch.

See you there?

Twittering the International Space Station Close Encounter

As I'm sure many people will know by now, at 2009-03-12 16:39 UTC the International Space Station had a close encounter with some debris. I won't bother going into any serious detail about that, I'm sure that, by the time you read this, others will have gone into this in much more detail.

The thing that I find really interesting about it is that I even know anything about it, right now, right at this moment, as I type this. And the reason I know about it is I use Twitter and TweetDeck.

I'm not sure who posted about it first, whose "tweet" I saw first, but I first saw mention of the problem about 50 minutes before the closest approach of the debris (this is where TweetDeck comes in, I always have it running on a screen, very handy). From then on I was able to follow links, get more information (including checking what "11:39 CDT" was in real money), get a live audio feed from the station via NASA TV.

And then, as 16:39 UTC came about, and the feed from the ISS had gone quiet, the tweets from the people I follow pretty much went quiet too. There was a moment, a fascinating moment, where I really felt like I was doing the same thing as lots of other people who share my interests and concerns — we were all just watching and listening and wishing the crew of the ISS well.

And then the moment passed and we could hear the ISS talking again (first in Russian, then in English) and there was an obvious huge sigh of relief.

Two things really stand out for me:

1. It's amazing that I was able to follow it at all. That's some incredible transparency. The fact that I could listen to the conversations taking place, how amazing is that? (and that's leaving aside the technology involved in making that happen)
2. By the time the danger for the ISS had passed the BBC news site had just managed to get a "BREAKING NEWS" banner on the front page. It wasn't until after the danger had passed that a page for the story appeared. By then, for me, via twitter, it was "old news".

Here's the TwitScoop graph for mention of the ISS as of the time of writing:

SPA Convention 2009: Photographs

Last night I processed some of the photographs I took at the 2009 Society for Popular Astronomy convention. You can see the photographs over in the album SPA Convention 2009.

I hope to do a report on the day some time soon (although time is against me at the moment) but, for now, I'll say it was an excellent day. I managed to attend all the talks and each one was enjoyable and fascinating.

SPA Convention 2009

It's that time again! The Society for Popular Astronomy have announced that their 2009 convention will be held at the Institute of Astronomy on March 7^th.

Having been to the 2005 convention and also the 2007 convention (photographs of the day can be found here), and having really enjoyed them, I'm looking forward to this one — even more so given that it's IYA.

Astroblast 2008 - Photographs

Despite some pretty awful weather my son and myself managed to make it down to Astroblast yesterday. The new venue (Bedford School) was tricky to find — we managed to end up at what appeared to be the back gate, all locked up with a view of some of the fun in the grounds, d'oh! — but overall it was a pretty straight run down.

Thankfully the rain didn't put too much of a downer on events and we had a fun time visiting the planetarium and especially the rocket building workshop put on by Out of this World Learning (if you ever get the chance to see them in action, do it, they made the whole thing loads of fun and my son really enjoyed himself — so did I come to think of it <g>).

Like with last year I took my camera and I have a small selection of photographs on my main website.

Astroblast 2008

Yesterday I was reminded that next month is Astroblast 2008. This year, rather than being held at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, it is being held at Bedford School.

Having attended in 2006 and 2007 I'm hoping I can make it along again. The past two years have been very enjoyable events.

Large Hadron Collider Up and Running

Well, that's it, the Large Hadron Collider is up and running. They've had two beams go all the way round (one clockwise, one anticlockwise). Thanks to the webcast I've been able to follow it pretty much all day (twittering as I went).

It's been absolutely fascinating. Like I said over here, I wasn't old enough to remember it (or, indeed, at the exact time, wasn't even anywhere that had a TV) but I imagine this is what watching the Moon landings must have felt like.

Although, of course, no actual collisions have happened today (and won't happen today) so I guess the "main event" hasn't really happened yet. As such, perhaps today was what watching Apollo 10 felt like?

No matter, I think this is one of those "I remember where I was/what I was doing" days.

Partial Lunar Eclipse Live Webcast

Via this post on the SPA BB:

2008 AUGUST 16 -- PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE
Webcast live from Peter Grego at St Dennis, Cornwall

I will be producing a live webcast of the partial lunar eclipse on the evening of 16 August on my website www.lunarobservers.com. The webcast takes place from 19:30 to 22:45 UT (8:30 to 11:45 pm BST). Images are updated every 20 seconds when live (640x480 resolution). The umbral phase of the eclipse lasts from 8:36 until 11:44 pm BST. If the event is clouded out a real-time computer simulation of the eclipse will be broadcast.

More details over here.

Comet Perseid

No, really, that's not a typo. Keep an eye out for Comet Perseid.

;-)

Seen via a post on the SPA BB.

Today's Eclipse: A Short Photo Diary

Just to add a little to my log of today's eclipse, a short photo diary of the session:

The session didn't start out too well, the Solarscope went flying in the wind so I had to come up with a method of making it heavier. I knew all those old power supplies would come in handy one day:

With the flying 'scope problem pretty much solved, the main event got under way:




However, the wind picked up, so more weight was needed. This is why you should never throw away that old laptop battery:


Soon, it got cloudy. Time to photograph my amazing solar observatory then:


Of course, because we were getting close to mid-eclipse, it wasn't a case of the whole sky being cloudy. Oh no. Towards the Sun it looked like this:


Whereas behind me:


However, around mid-eclipse, things did clear up:


So it wasn't a total loss. :-)

Eclipse Observing Log

I've now uploaded my observing log from today's eclipse. There's a handful of photographs in there too. Nothing too special, just captures of the view as seen via the Solarscope.

I'll probably get around to uploading some more elsewhere at some point. I'll post here when I do.

The eclipse is over for me

Well, that's it for me. The earlier fair weather turned increasingly cloudy and, at around 10:50 BST, I was pretty much clouded out.

I had a reasonable run though. Managed to see the very start of the eclipse and got a good, albeit short, view around mid-eclipse. You can see the updates I made over on Twitter and Plurk (the latter being a new one to me but I thought I'd give it a go to see what it's like).

I'll try and type up my log later on. I've also got a bunch of photographs which I took on my Canon PowerShot G9. Once I've downloaded them and processed them they'll appear in the photography section of my main site and also over on my Flickr stream.

Looking good so far...

With about ½ hour to go to the start of the partial solar eclipse I've got mostly clear skies with just a few little fluffy clouds floating about.

Fingers crossed things go better than back in March 2006.

I'll try and make frequent updates over on Twitter.

If You're in London on Friday 1st August...

If you're in London tomorrow, and have some free time in the morning, this might interest you:

The society have got permission to take a few telescopes along to Hyde Park in London, near Speakers' Corner, to view the partial eclipse on Friday morning, which is between 9.32 and 11.03 am BST, with mid eclipse at 10.16. The Sun will be about 20% covered (see separate thread for what this means).

Any members who care to join us will be very welcome, though we only have permission for a few small telescopes so we don't need any more. It is possible that the media will be there as well as we are sending out a press release.

FAS Convention 2008

This post has just turned up on the SPA BB.

The UK's Federation of Astronomical Societies will be holding its 2008 convention on September 20^th 2008 at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge.

Mars Pheonix on Twitter

Via Stuart (of Astronomy Blog) who got it via Will Gater and Orbiting Frog: the Phoenix Mars Lander is on Twitter.

That's pretty cool.

And it takes me back almost 11 years. Back on 23^rd June 1997 I subscribed to the Majordomo mailing list for Mars Global Surveyor. It was a great service, with emails coming every so often with reports of what was happening and the status of the spacecraft. The last report I received was on 9^th April 1999:

Mars Global Surveyor initiated normal mapping operations on Sunday, April 4. The spacecraft is now in the nadir pointed configuration with the High Gain Antenna tracking the Earth. The spacecraft and instruments have been operating nominally, but the combination of a sequence error and DSN tracking problems have caused several small gaps in the returned data. As of Friday, April 9, these problems appear to have been completely resolved and all acquired data is being successfully returned.

I'm not sure if that was the last email ever sent out, or if I unsubscribed after that.

It's kind of interesting to note what's changed in that time. Back then it was done via email, so it was sort of slow and was always "in the past" (for significant values of "in the past"). These days it's happening via twitter so, thanks to my constantly open Psi window that is connected to Twitter, I can see things as they happen (well, as they're written about and sent out).

Add to that the fact that, these days, I can know what the Lovell telescope is up to at any point in time (not forgetting that that's true for all the other Jodrell Bank 'scopes) and it's pretty clear that getting information about what's happening in astronomy and space exploration is easier than ever.

To all those people who work hard to make it happen: thanks.

UK Earthquake

Okay, not exactly astronomy, not really astronomy at all to be honest, but.... it was pretty cool anyway.

I was woken up by an earthquake last night, quite a strong one by UK standards. I've written more about it over on my general weblog.

Next week's lunar eclipse

I'm not sure if I'll get to observe next week's total lunar eclipse (assuming the weather will be fine) due to the fact that a) it's during the working week and b) all the fun stuff happens at silly hours. Which is sort of annoying given just how enjoyable the last one was (even if I did manage to destroy a pair of glasses).

However, if anyone is thinking of staying up for it, you might find this article by the Society for Popular Astronomy useful as it as all the information you'll need. This includes details of the planned LunarObservers.com live webcast.

Dr Brian Cox

Being a member of The Society for Popular Astronomy, and being interested in photography, it's no surprise that when I attend an SPA event I take a camera with me. I tend to publish many of the images and I've also got an agreement with the editor of Popular Astronomy (the magazine published by the SPA) which lets him use any of the images in the magazine if he thinks they're useful.

The nice thing about this is that I generally don't know which he'll use, if any, so when the magazine turns up it's always a nice surprise to find an image or two in there.

At the last SPA meeting, in October last year, we had Dr Brian Cox giving the main talk (and a cracking talk it was too). I took a handful of photographs, my favourite being this:

So you can imagine how chuffed I was when I sat down last night to read the latest edition of the magazine and found this:


Insert smiley face here.

Also, don't forget, the next meeting of the SPA is a week on Saturday.

Finally! A View of Comet Holmes!

Typical, isn't it? For the few days since news of comet Holmes started doing the rounds it's been cloudy here. Last night I needed to be out for part of the evening, not getting back home until at least 20:30.

Guess what.

Yes, that's right, it's was nice and clear.

However, even while I was out busy doing the thing I needed to be doing I could see that something was wrong in Perseus. I could see there was a star there that shouldn't be there and, unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, it was just a little "fuzzy" when compared to other stars.

When I finally got home it was still clear, just. A huge bank of cloud was rolling in from the west so I had about 15 minutes at the most to get a reasonable view of the comet. I grabbed the Meade 10x50s and headed out into the garden.

Wow!

Yes, I know, "wow" is one of those words that get easily used when something novel turns up in the sky. But, really, wow! It's quite a sight in the bins. Mostly it reminded me of a very bright planetary nebula, the view reminded me somewhat of when I've observed M57 (although, obviously, it was bigger, more circular, brighter and less ring-like — but you get the idea, right?).

Tonight is looking like it could be another clear night.

Guess what...