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.
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.
2008 AUGUST 16 -- PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSEMore details over here.
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.
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.
If so, this thread on the SPA BB might be of interest to you.
Via this thread on the SPA's BB, a new online planetarium written in Flash. To quote the opening page:
The Flash Planetarium Project aims to produce the best online planetarium available, allowing you to view the night sky from anywhere in the world from within your browser (no telescope required!)Pop over and take a look. It's still in the early days of development and Andy is looking for feedback.
If you've a passing interest in Astronomy or you're are an enthusiastic amateur astronomer or science buff, then we're sure that you'll find this site interesting and above all, fun!
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.
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:
More on the threat to astronomy in the UK:
Philip Stobbart made the following interesting post on the SPA's BB:
If you want to stick a topical slant on your letter, the Solar Terrestrial Physics community, which carries out observations of the Earth's upper atmosphere that are then used as inputs or validations of climate models are also being cut. In terms of ground based facilities run by the UK, the cut is 100%. In terms of ground based facilities contributed to by the UK, the cut is also 100%, which has sent quite a few of the international radars to the wall. They all run on very finely balanced budgets at the best of times and take decades to fund, design, build and get stuff out of. All done in the middle of the international heliospheric/polar year, which is a two year international research focus on STP.So, let me check that I'm reading this right: On the one hand we've got a government that claims that climate change is a serious issue and that something has to be done about the problem but, on the other hand, that same government is cutting out our country's involvement in producing data that informs the science behind the claims that the planet's climate is changing.
A letter to the times was sent by one group here.
Results from the facilities to be shut or threatened by this include such minor things as the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer and observations of a part of the atmosphere that is very succeptible to changes in the global climate.
Further to last week's depressing news, Robin Scagell has posted this article on the SPA's BB. The main body, an email he's received from elsewhere, reads:
Dear all,
I forward to you this message from a colleague at UCL, for your urgent attention, apart from what you hopefully may have done about this by other means (like writing to your local MP, which is usually very effective, please also visit www.saveastronomy.co.uk).
There is now an approved (e)-petition online to collect signatures regarding the funding situation for physics and astronomy. Petitions with sufficient number of signees are forwarded to the government who then needs to come back with a response.
Its quick and easy;
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Physics-Funding/
Please sign it and then forward this on so that it might reach critical mass.
In addition, write to your local MP at:
www.saveastronomy.co.uk
-------------------------
some background information:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2228679,00.html
http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/index.shtml (scroll down to the STFC item)
Obviously, please forward this to as many people as possible. A government review on this matter is planned by early January.
best regards,
francisco
News of the outburst of comet P/Holmes (17P) sort of caught me out yesterday in that the first news I saw of it turned up just as I was finishing work for the day.
So, this morning saw me trying to catch up with various requests to add or update information on the SPA's website. I won't bother prattling on with all the details, all the usual suspects have already blogged about it some some length, but I just wanted to mention that a thread about the comet is under way on the SPA's BB.
Of course, where I live, it's cloudy and from what I can see at the moment there's little prospect of things clearing up in the next day or so. :-(
Via this thread on the SPA's BB:
Hi, I’m writing from a small market research firm in Bath. We’ve been commissioned by the Open University to conduct market research into the commercial potential for an educational astronomy-related product that’s under development.There's not that much information about it at the moment, although it's an interesting idea if the large-scale versions are anything to go by. I can imagine that it might be a useful prop of you're the sort of person who gives tours of the night sky to groups of people, but I'm struggling to think of a personal use (other than the gadget-value anyway).
The product is called ‘Space Signpost’, and it’s a desktop gadget that will physically turn and point to the exact location of any astronomical body. Here’s a link to the Space Signpost web site, which shows some of the educational prototypes to date; I can also post a sketch of some of the thinking for potential design of the commercial product, which is a much smaller desktop version, with specific features as yet undetermined.
It's now well over 2 years since I joined the Society for Popular Astronomy and started to get involved, as a user, with their BB.
A little later on in 2005 there was a problem with the SPA website and, more by accident than design, I lent Jeff Stevens a hand with figuring out what had gone wrong. As part of that process I ended up being made an moderator on the BB and then, a short while later, got bumped up to administrator status.
After that I got to helping out with little bits of HTML hacking for the main site and even knocked together a couple of "fun" pages outside of the main content (first was the BB user map and, some time later, the astronomical event timeline).
Recently Jeff has had other demands on his free time and, sadly, found that he needed to step down as the SPA webmaster. It was suggested that I might like to step into the role. Well, I accepted and, as of last Saturday's SPA council meeting, it seems I'm officially an officer of the SPA.
It's quite exciting and daunting all at the same time. It also feels a little odd too. As a child I was a member of the Junior Astronomical Society (as the SPA was called then) and, to a young lad living in York, those grown-ups all the way down in London seemed very remote — now I'm one of them!
Jeff will be a hard act to follow (same goes for Paul Sutherland who was the webmaster before Jeff) and I hope I can manage to serve the society as well as he did.
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.
I really should prepare myself better before I go out observing.
Paul S, over on the SPA BB, pointed out that I should have captured Mercury along with the Moon and Venus. This is where I should have been prepared, I hadn't even realised that Mercury was visible around that time from that location.
I fired up Starry Night and had a look at where Mercury was and then went back and looked at the photographs I took and, sure enough, in just the right spot, there was faint little Mercury.
Of course, in the photograph I posted yesterday, my unprepared head was occulting the planet.
Have a look at this image. It's a blown-up crop of this:
Okay, that's enough boasting now. I'll try not to let it happen again...
It's been a while since I've seen a "scientists to bring the Universe to an end" story, but a fellow admin on the SPA BB made a post pointing at this vote on the BBC.
Come on, everyone sing along...
The day was laid out similar to that of the first convention with various talks during the day, the main talk being The Planet Venus and the Venus Express Mission by Professor Fred Taylor. Alongside all the talks were various stands by the sections of the SPA and also various stalls hosted by a number of vendors of items relating to astronomy.
When I got back from the tour it was time for Nik's second talk of the day, this time an interactive question and answer session dealing with all aspects of astronomical imaging. Given that I'm not that interested in imaging at the moment I decided to skip this and, instead, have a wander around the stalls. I had a chat with Greenwitch — mostly about last year's and this year's Astroblast (the good news is that this time round there will be catering!) – and I also had a good look around the stall run by Astronomica (while there I picked up an affordable 2x barlow to replace the rather terrible one that came with my Explorer 130M – I'm hoping it should do a better job and I'll report on that when I get the chance to try it out).
It now looks like the convention will be held every other year and the next one, in 2009, promises to be extra special.
I can't wait.
