The skies are clear - let's grab the opportunity!

I'm not on duty in my boarding house tonight, so I will open up the observatory from 7.45 until 8.45. At such short notice, I don't expect places to be over-booked, so mail me to say you're coming if you can...

Iridium Flare 14th October

While you're at it, why not look out for this Iridum flare? These bright flashes of light happen when a rotating Iridium series satellite flashes a beam of reflected sunlight back to the Earth from its mirrored surface.

14 Oct

18:23:41

-4

46°

193° (SSW)

11.0 km (W)

-8

Iridium 4

-4 tells you how bright it will be. The biggest minus numbers are the best. -4 is very bright.
46 tells you how high up to look. The horizon is at 0 and overhead is at 90, so this is almost exactly half way.
193 tells you what direction to look in - North is 0, south is 180.

in other words, look half way up the sky, a little west of south at 18:23 and 41 seconds. the flare will last for a few seconds...

source: heavens-above website, link on the right

ISS pass - hope you see it!

The best flyover of the ISS in the next week or so will be on the 19th Oct.


look out for it at 20:59:08 in the WSW. It will climb quite high in the sky and get very bright, until it is the brightest star-like object in the sky. Unlike a star, it will be flying eastwards (it is actually passing directly over the English Channel), and it will be visible fromYork for about three minutes.

19 Oct

-3.1

20:59:08

10

WSW

21:02:10

46

SSE

21:05:14

10

E

source: heavens-above website, link on the right

Sorry everybody, but I think we'd better call it quits

The rain has really set in for the day now, and I think that the chances of seeing anything at all tonight are now basically zero. This is a real shame, so I will look at my diary and try get get an alternative date for you as soon as possible...

It's really not looking good.

I'm seeing the advertised white cloud - the weather forecast seems fairly clear that it will stay with us all of today I'm afraid. Stay tuned, and I'll keep you posted, but it looks as if tonight will be a bit of a wash-out...

Still giving cloud, but no rain

The weather forecast has brightened up! They still think we'll have cloud, but at least the rain has gone. The only way to deal with the situation is to keep on checking...

Not looking too good now

The BBC site at the bottom of this page is offering us white cloud followed by rain on Saturday. Naturally this isn't all that encouraging, but we'll keep a watch on how things develop...

So far so good for Saturday.

The long-range forecast doesn't immediately put me off about Saturday, but it is still a long way off! We have a nice group for the evening, so it should be possible to get some good work done on monitoring the draconids, if any turn up. It would be great, though not at all essential if you could have a look at night-sky maps for the northern horizon (all the weblinks on this site offer them), and get to know you way around in advance.

I aim to map any meteors we see onto the chart, and submit our findings to the BAA, so fingers crossed - you might be part of scientific history in the making. (Or it may just be cloudy - that's part of the excitement of astronomy...)