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.
