It's Geminid time!

The Geminid meteor shower should peak on the 13th/14th December, perhaps with rates as high as 100 shooting stars per hour. These is an unusual storm, because it doesn't seem to be associated with a comet. Instead, the source of the tiny rocks that make up the shower seems to be an asteroid called (strangely) 3200 Phaethon. This asteroid zooms very close to the sun during its orbit, so perhaps it gets cooked enough to create a swarm of debris along its orbital path. Another possibility is that 3200 Phaethon was actually smashed off of the much larger asteroid Pallas, and the Geminids are tiny fragments left over from this impact.

Either way, the absence of any Moon on these nights makes it very likely that this year is the best chance you'll get to see this storm. Look towards the north-east in the late evening - dress warmly!

Saturday morning meeting

So yesterday I told the amazing story the descent of the Apollo 11 mission's lander "Eagle". Hopefully, you came to realise that it was not at all as easy, or safe as popular histories might let you believe. I think that Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were every bit as heroic in the face of terrifying situations as other explorers, such as Shackleton or Douglas Mawson (more about him another time perhaps).

Here is an edited sound file of the descent as it was broadcast on 20th July 1969. I have deleted some of the gaps and tidied up a few parts, so my version is considerably shorter than it would have been in reality.

Listen out for Charlie Duke's voice (he's "Houston", or CAPCOM), Buzz Aldrin reading out altitude and lateral data and Neil Armstrong announcing the landing. You'll also hear Charlie Duke say "copy 1202" just before they get to 1400 feet - that was the error code in the navigation computer. Later, you'll hear descriptions of "great shadow" (the Eagle's own shadow on the Lunar surface) and the spray of dust and debris as the rocket exhaust hit the ground. Just before the landing, listen out for "contact light" as the leg probe hits the Moon, and then the engine shut-down sequence. Finally of course, there is the hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck exchange between Armstrong and Duke - "Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed", and "you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thankyou!"

Morning meeting, 30th November

Hopefully, you're visiting this post because you wanted to see some pictures of Joe Kitter doing his record-breaking skydive in 1959. If you got here, well done for listening!

Kittinger key facts;

Project codename: Excelsior
Maximum height reached: 31.3 km above the Earth
maximum speed during free fall: 988km per hour
time to climb: 90 minutes
time to fall: 13mins 45 secs


In this one, you can see him just exiting the capsule



Here he is after landing


this is a life-sized copy of the capsule - note how small it is!


Joe Kittinger was with Felix Baumgartner's ground control team when his record was finally beaten in 2012, after an amazing 53 years.

what will tomorrow's meeting be about?

Tuesday night's session

this is the crew that flew over our heads the other night - click on the picture to find out more about them...

Tuesday was great fun - many thanks to everyone who came along. Just to recap, we started off by seeing a flyby of the international space-station at 19:07. It was seen in perfect viewing conditions, appearing at first low over Rowntree House and then gliding silently across the sky towards the Minster, growing brighter as it came. It shines because of reflected sunlight, so we were able to see the exact moment when the station slid far enough around the Earth to disappear into its shadow, and wink out of sight. Those of us who were able to stay long enough saw the station again at 20:44, having completed a journey around the entire planet!

We then got down to a bit of constellation-hunting. here are the ones we looked at (learned maybe?)

The Great Bear - watch out for double star Mizar/Alcor
The Little Bear - Polaris at the tail - the pole star
Draco - winding between the two bears

Cassiopeia - a queen on a throne
Andromeda - shares a star with Pegasus, has a galaxy in the middle
Pegasus - the great square, a real autumn constellation
Perseus - to the left of Andromeda, and below Cassiopea, home of a pair of star clusters, as shown below.



Cephus - indistinct - looks like a child's drawing of a house, between Cassiopeia and the pole star

Cygnus - Deneb - very bright, very far away
Aquila - Altair
Lyra - Vega
these three stars form the "summer triangle".

There was some doubt about our sighting of the Andromeda nebula - please have another go - it's visible to the naked eye in dark skies. On this map, it's the oval labelled M31.



At just after 20:00 - Jupiter rose far to the North-east, and we were able to get the telescope on the roof and see it, reddish and indistinct because it was so low down in the haze.

We're On!

The sky has cleared magnificently, and I'll be opening up the observatory from 7.00pm tonight. (closing at 8.30).

See you all there!

Not looking promising for tonight

I'm very sorry to say that the sky over York right now is distinctly gloomy. It is only 10:00 as I write, so I'll keep posting, but if the weather doesn't improve, I think we should reschedule.

The reserve date is going to be Fri 19th October, meeting at the observatory at 7.00pm. I'll make a final post at 17:45 this evening, to either confirm that we're going ahead tonight, or to reschedule for Friday.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and I hope I'll see you all at some point this week!!

Tuesday night session - latest news

It is now 14:24 on Monday afternoon, and as I sit typing, the sky is grey and overcast over York Minster. Hopefully, it will clear up in time for tomorrow's meeting, but please check in with this website before you set off, just in case.

Highlights for the session might include an appearance from the ISS! It will fly by at 19:07 on Tuesday evening, so make sure you arrive early if you're coming. (Next pass at 20:44).

Jupiter will rise just after 8.07 pm - so we should stick around to see that.

I aim to do a guided tour of the autumn constellations tomorrow, and we'll try to get a glimpse of the Andromeda galaxy, as well as the double cluster in Perseus.

Bolide over Bootham?

Edmund Fisher, USnr, took this interesting picture two Saturdays ago at sunset. The object right at the top of the frame was moving quickly, and soon passed out of sight.

It is very likely that this was a bolide, which is an unusually bright "shooting star", but the timing and direction - it appears to be travelling just slightly west of south make it possible that Edmund saw part of the space debris that was seen the night before, as described in this article.

Finally, the skies are dark in the evenings

As the evening twilight gets earlier, we can reopen the observatory for visits.

I would like to invite all of you to join me for an autumn constellation tour from 7.00pm - 8.30pm on Tuesday 16th October. Please remember to check this website closer to the time - if the weather is poor, I may have to post a cancellation notice on the day, but hopefully the sky will be clear!

Dress warmly!

all go for GCSE Astronomy launch!

We are very excited at Bootham this week, as we are launching our first ever teaching group for edexcel's astronomy course. We're running the course over two years, at two hours per week on Wednesdays and Fridays, using the school's extra-curricular activity slot to make the necessary time available. as an additional bit of adventurous living, we have opened the class to three different year-groups in the school, so that we can try out vertical teaching with students of different ages working together. The course is being delivered by Russell Newlands, who specialises in space-science and cosmology, and Mike Shaw, who will take on planetary science and astrobiology. Other parts of the course (celestial trig, observational practice etc) are being shared out between the two. Our first group comprises around a dozen students, chosen by competition from a large field of applicants.

If you are not currently a student at Bootham  and would like to know more about our entry requirements, contact us via the main school website (click on the badge at the top of this page).

If ever the sky clears, you might see some interesting clouds

No really. Mid-summer is the time for noctiluctant clouds. These are very high altitude clouds that appear to glow electric blue in the dark. You have to stay up very late to see them, and they seem to switch on for just a short period every year. Nobody really knows yet what causes them, but theories include space dust or possibly global warming. They are not the northern lights, but they are very special and rather lovely to catch in the midnight summer sky.

this picture was taken by Brian Whittaker as he flew his plane over Newfoundland on the 13th June.

source: spaceweather.com

Mega Moon rising

This weekend, the Moon will be closer to the Earth than it normally is, and will seem bigger in the sky than usual. On the evening of the 6th it will rise very big and full at about 8pm BST. If you can find a spot with a clear view of the south eastern horizon, this is a spectacle you should not miss!

Triple conjunction in wonderful viewing conditions

I hope you've all been enjoying this view this evening! You can see Venus (top) and Jupiter (lower) against a well-lit young Moon. Tomorrow's show should be just as good if you missed it tonight!

Duck!

What will you be up to on the 1st April? This is not an April fool's joke, but one of the things that will happen to you that day is that you will be narrowly missed by a sixty metre long asteroid called 2012EG5. It will be travelling at about 8km per second relative to the Earth, and will pass us at a distance of about 150 000 miles. There is absolutely no danger from this encounter, but it is the sort of thing that happens all the time without anyone really noticing. Objects like this are classed as NEOs - Near Earth Objects, and they have orbits that bring them, unsurprisingly, near to the Earth from time to time. One day in the future a NEO might  occupy the same orbital position as the Earth, at which point interesting events would unfold fairly rapidly. Astronomers are sure (to a high degree of precision) that there is virtually no chance of the currently known 1301 potentially hazardous NEOs hitting us any time soon.

Excellent new animation from NASA

This video shows a recreation of the way in which the Moon is thought to have formed, and how it got all the features we see today.

ISSP session 2

The ISSP finished in high style today, with practical work on the scale of the solar system, impact crater formation and the real size of interstellar distances. I was thrilled to hear students using terms like "you can see the shockwave moving through the impact site" when we were recreating craters, and it was a great pleasure to spend time with so many intelligent, interested young people.

I hope very much to see some of you at our next observatory open evening!

Thank you for coming!

It was a bit cloudy, but at least it wasn't too cold! We got to see a few things on our target list, including Venus, which showed as a perfect half-moon shape, Jupiter and some fine cloud belts and Mars, with a brilliant white polar cap showing clearly against the orange desert soils of that cold, arid world.

In the photograph below, you can see the Cooke telescope pointing at Venus through the observatory hatch, captured in a one second long exposure.

The full Moon put in a showing, with this view as it rose on the eastern horizon.

Full Moon

There is something really magnificent about the sight of the full Moon sailing up into the sky. For thousands of years people have responded to this dramatic spectacular in the arts, with music, paintings, poetry and even architecture relating to the phenomenon.

Here is a lovely picture taken this week by Verena Kummel, showing clearly the ancient (three billion years old) dark seas overlaid with more recent impact craters.

Can you name the seas? In this picture you can find; The Mare Crisium, Mare Frigoris, Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Serenitatis, Mare Fecunditatis, Mare Humorum, Mare Vaporum, Mare Imbium, Oceanus Procellarum, Mare Nubium, and many more!

Observatory session, Thursday 8th March, 7.30 - 8.30pm

If the sky is clear, I will open up the observatory on the date shown. Mars has just reached opposition, tucked under Leo's paws and should be a good object to look for, but the full Moon will make it hard to see much more than the brightest few stars otherwise. For the interested, I'll go through the basics of setting up the portable Meade telescope so that you can hire it if you'd like to, and we'll put it through its paces on setting Jupiter/Venus.

Finally, we can try to catch a glimpse of comet Garradd with binoculars, and have a go at taking a picture of it with the Nikon camera.

mail me if you can make it!

Eye witness account of last night's meteorite!

Large Meteorite Seen Over Bootham School

Late on the evening of Saturday 3^rd March, a meteorite could be seen making its way across the skies of Northern England. We were surprised and fortunate to catch sight of this phenomenon as we returned to the Fox boarding house after an evening activity in the Sports Hall.

It was like seeing a shooting star, but in slow-motion, in full-colour, and so up-close it felt almost within reach. You could say the head of the meteorite was the size of a football, with a blazing tail of orange and white fire. But perhaps it looked more like a Year-7 student, wearing some kind of jet-boots, like the hero in a sci-fi animation, coolly cruising across the night sky.

In any case, standing on the Fox quad, we saw the meteorite rise over one of the Maths classrooms and travel across Fox House, only to dive behind the Language department and disappear from sight. We almost expected a huge explosion upon impact somewhere on the other side of the river Ouse, but the meteorite continued on its way and is said to have been seen as far south as Devon.   

A sighting like this is very rare, perhaps once-in-lifetime. It was certainly strange and startling enough to leave us (two almost-adults) feeling boyishly exhilarated afterwards.

Daniel Gustafsson & Luke Highstead, Resident Graduates      

First session of this year's ISSP

It was very nice to meet all the young people who attended yesterday's meeting of the ISSP, and I was delighted to see so much enthusiasm shown by so many. We covered a lot of ground on the general theme of stars, but in summary yesterday's topics included;

• the constellations and how they change through the seasons,
• stellar spectral classes, and what the colours of stars can tell us,
• how to see sunspots using telescope projection,
• using transits to measure what time it is,
• and the stellar magnitude scale.

Here are just a few pictures from the session, and I'm sorry that not everyone is shown but I hope they help to remind you of what you did!

see you next week for the solar system, life in the universe and how we're going to find it!

A wonderful photo from one of our members

Verena Kummel captured this view of the Moon and Jupiter last Saturday evening from the Bootham grounds, using a long exposure and a brick wall to keep the camera steady. I am very pleased to be able to share it with you, as it really captures the beauty of the scene last week.

Any other submissions will be greatly appreciated!

see a comet this week!

Comet Garradd has been creeping through the inner solar system over the last few months, and its orbit has brought it close enough to the Earth to see with binoculars. You won't see much more than a pale smudge of light, but it is so easy to find over the next few nights that you really ought to give it a go.



For the next few days, the comet is very near the star beta Ursa minoris (Kochab), which is itself not far from the pole star. Use the star map on this blogsite to find your way to it.

Other interesting pictures from last night

I thought you might find this picture interesting - it was taken at about 1920 GMT from the old Penn House carpark, with the trees along the railwayline in the foreground. If you look carefully you will see that the crescent Moon clearly shows the "dark part" in a pale grey light. This is called ashen light, and it is caused by light reflecting from the Earth, in this case the afternoon sunshine bouncing up off the Atlantic ocean. Ashen light is visible fairly often, and sometimes seems to have different colours. Some observers suggest that the place where the light is bouncing up from has an effect - orange ashen light when the Sahara is the light cource, and green light when forested areas are involved. Someone living on the Moon would experience ashen light the same way that we appreciate a moonlit landscape here on Earth.

In this long-exposure shot, you can see a pale trail disappearing into the side of Constantine House. This is the International Space Station, which made a wonderful display as it passed between Venus and Jupiter just before 1930 GMT. You get the trail as the object moves while the camera shutter is open. You can get predictions for ISS flyovers from the Heavens Above website - there are usually a few every day, so have a look out for the best (brightest) ones.

Finally, trying out Bootham's excellent Nikon D700  teamed up with a 300mm zoom lens, I was able to snap this neat little shot of the Pleiades. I am so excited by the possibilities of this camera that I will be ordering some DSLR astrophotography guides for the obervatory this week. I hope that we will be able to get members of the school observatory experimenting with their own pictures soon.

The stars are elongated into short lines because the Earth had time to rotate slightly during the exposure, dragging the stars westwards across the sky.

I'm sure we can get better than this!

I'll be the first to admit that I am a very poorly informed photographer, so I hope that a follower of this site will send me something better. However, this shot of the Moon and Venus sailing over the JB library at Bootham was fun and easy to take, despite the cold! I'll have another go tomorrow, if the clear skies hold out.

Watch out for a big show this weekend!

If the sky is clear on Saturday this weekend, look into the western sky as the twlight gathers. Jupiter, Venus and the Moon will be close togther in a magnificent display that's actually quite rare. The closeness of all three objects will bring them into focus at the centre of your eye, where you are at your most sensitive, and the view should be really good. I would love to receive any pictures you manage to take - they can go on this blogsite! Notice Mercury down at the bottom of the view too - that'll be hard to spot! Sunday will be good too, so don't worry if you don't manage to see anything on the Saturday.

New books you may find of interest

I have bought some books for the observatory library, and you are welcome to borrow these if you are planning to do some observing on your own during the holidays. They are

"The Practical Astronomer", by W. Gater and A. Vamplew.
"Stargazing Basics", by P. Kinzer.
"Astronomy Manual", by J. Green
"Observing the Night Sky with Binoculars" by S O'Meara
"Exploring the solar System with Binoculars" by S O'Meara.

all of them are aimed at getting a complete beginner into confident, practical astronomy as smoothly as possible. Happy reading!

A good night was had by all!

It was very good to see so many people at the observing session last night - thankyou very much for coming! Just to recap on some of the things we looked at;



First, we said goodnight to Venus as our sister world sank into the western haze over the school library. Binoculars give a hint that Venus has phases, like the moon, but a good telescope really helps.

Then we used binoculars to see Betelgeuse - a giant red star that forms the top shoulder of Orion. Then we tracked downwards and eastwards to view Sirius and Procyon, his faithful hunting dogs.

On the other side of Orion's belt, pointing upwards and westwards lies the red star Aldebaran, surrounded by an aging open cluster known as the Hyades. Further onwards and westwards we come to the magnificent Pleiades - also known as the seven sisters. These are fairly young stars, all formed in the same cocoon of dust and gas about 100 million years ago. You could think of the Pleiades as a sort of primary school for stars, while the Hyades are more like a secondary school.

We then hooked back to Orion, and found the glorious Great Orion Nebula under the belt - it is sometimes described as Orion's sword. This is an enormous cloud of dust and gas left over from the birth of the galaxy. At some point, shock waves from a nearby supernova explosion triggered the formation of thousands of stars in the cloud, so it can be thought of as a nursery for stars.

So there you have it - stellar birth to stellar old age in just a few hops around Orion. If we'd been able to see the Crab Nebula in Taurus (not far from Aldebaran either), we'd have also seen what happens to stars after they die.

After this, as clouds gathered above we had a look at Jupiter, catching a nice view with two moons on either side, and the two major cloud belts showing nicely.

Once viewing had finished, it was great fun showing off the transit instrument, and explaining (probably very badly) how the "lines of longitude" on the sky (right ascension), can be used as a clock to create a measure known as sidereal time. The apparent movement of the sky is something absolutely central to really getting inside stargazing. Once you have a feel for what to expect, in what direction and when (and this is not that hard to do), it makes a real difference to your confidence in finding your way around. I very highly recommend taking the time to get familiar with ideas on the topic of the celestial sphere.
Finally, we spoke briefly about binoculars. May I recommend that you think about getting yourself a well-made pair of something like 8x50? These are quite easily bought second-hand for very little, and they make a world of difference to anyone starting out on learning about the night sky. I've added a link to the firm Telescope House. They supplied our new telescope, and have always been very helpful whenever I have been in touch - if you feel like buying new, they are worth calling for some honest advice about matching budget with performance.

Don't forget this Friday!

If the skies are clear, I'll open up the observatory at 8pm this Friday evening. Drop me a line if you feel like coming, but keep an eye on this website, just in case the weather doesn't deliver the viewing we need.

Coronal Mass ejection (CME) on the way

At about 2pm on tuesday afternoon the biggest solar storm to hit the Earth since 2005 will arrive. It is possible that we may get a showing of the Northern Lights on Tuesday night, so check in with this page to see what the aurorawatch status is. If you see red, go outside at once and look for aurorae!!!



this picture was taken by Bjørn Jørgensen from Tromsø, Norway on the night of the 22nd.

Sorry folks, we need to cancel.

It is now pouring with rain, and I don't think there is any possibility of the weather improving in the next few hours, so with great regret I am cancelling tonight's observing session. Next Friday, the school will be closed for leave weekend, so the next good opportunity will be on Friday 3rd Feb, at 8.00pm. This clashes with a chamber choir concert, so please continue to support that event if you were planning to go - there will be other observatory sessions during the term.

Oh dear - the weather looks terrible

As I peer from my office window, the clouds seem to be gathering ever more thickly, and the thin band of clear sky that had held sway in the north-east all morning has finally vanished. I'll make a final call on tonight's observing evening at 5.00pm this evening, so that you get a chance to see a note in the school's reception area, as well as posting here.

New link in the useful links table

Breaking news from NASA can now be found at Nasa science News.

Not so clear after all.

The sky was strangely obscured last night, with a soft haze that trapped an awful lot of street lighting and made "seeing" (the quality of the view) poorer than I had hoped. Jupiter delivered however, with lovely views of the cloud belts, and a nice wide display of all four moons. We were also able to do a bit of star-cluster gazing, enjoying good views of the Pleiades cluster.

Last night's session was very sparsely attended, and I wonder if these messages get through in time for you to act on the invitation. Therefore, I would like to invite everyone to an observing night on Friday 20th January, from 8.00pm onwards. There will be no Moon, but Jupiter remains a good target, and we can do some binocular astronomy for interesting winter sky objects. It would be very helpful if you could send me an email to say that you are coming and as ever, check this site on the evening to see if the weather is going to let us go ahead.

Clear skies!

The weather looks good, so I will be opening up the observatory tonight for an hour from 8pm to 9pm. Come and see Jupiter, and perhaps the glories of the winter constellations too! The Moon will rise at about 8.50pm, and will be well worth a look.