It was an extremely busy & interesting day.  Several members of the public took the opportunity to drop by for a chat, observe the current activity on the surface of our nearest star the Sun using the 3 telescopes that were on display and to view our various display boards showcasing the societies activities.  Our 3D photographs & the planet game also proved to be very popular too!

Safe views of the Sun were offered by various CMHASD members that helped throughout the day using 'Anita' one of the societies Dobsonian telescopes built by members Steve Floodgate and David Grist (see Building Dobsonians) whilst member Jim Burchell offered safe views through his refractor.  Both of these telescopes were showing white light views of the sunspots currently visible on the Sun’s surface. 

Member Diane Clarke offered safe views of the sunspots on the Sun too as well as the Sun’s various prominences and surface detail with her Ha (Hydrogen alpha) line telescope, see the 2 photos below.

Both images captured an absolutely massive prominence on the Sun at the 11 O'Clock position; this wall of plasma was more than five times taller than our entire planet Earth!  There were also prominences captured at the 1,2,6 and 10 O'Clock positions too in the images.

NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN DIRECTLY. Please click here for solar observing safely.

More photos of the day taken by members John Archer, Jim Burchell, Diane Clarke and Janice McClean are in the slideshow below. Thank you for sharing them with us.

[ngg src="galleries" ids="64" display="basic_slideshow"]Also a big Thank you to Colin Wheeler for providing the marquee we used and to member Steve Floodgate for allowing us the use of his van for transporting the displays and equipment. Plus thank you to all the CMHASD members that helped on the day too :-) and to Diane Clarke for helping to write this post.

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Our society currently supports the Dartford Grammar School Astronomy Club, and on the 25th January 2021 we held a virtual observing evening using Simon's observatory.

The students really enjoyed the evening

'The boys from last night have been on the google classroom leaving you rave reviews'  

'Last night blew their minds! They loved it.'

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Image by Simon Dawes & Dartford Grammar School Astronomical Society[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="384"] Image by Simon Dawes & Dartford Grammar School Astronomical Society[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Image by Simon Dawes & Dartford Grammar School Astronomical Society[/caption]

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We hosted The 2018 British Astronomical Association Back to Basics workshop on 6th October.

These workshops are great for beginners just starting out in astronomy and wanting to learn how to use their telescopes or get started in Astronomy and over 50 people turned up - well done and thank you to all the Crayford Members who helped out.

The slideshow below is of photos taken of the day by member Jim Burchell - Thank you Jim.

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The Society took part in an Astronomy Fun Day on Saturday 25th August 2018 at the Priory Shopping Centre to promote Astronomy, and encourage locals to visit the shopping centre, the day was well attended and along with CMHASD was an inflatable planetarium. During the day we were promoting the BAA Back to basics workshop  we are supporting in October.

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