Category: Society informal & observing evenings

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Below are a selection of photos taken from our observing evenings during April.  

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[et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text]NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN DIRECTLY. Please click here for solar observing safely.

Thursday 2nd January 2025 was a good day & night for Astronomy.  Clear views of the Sun during the day and a fantastic clear night.  It was also an informal night too for the Society and as the sky was absolutely clear; without no hesitation members got out their telescopes and spent the evening observing the night sky.  Below are some of the superb images members took that day and night.

The Sun with lots of sunspots taken by Honor Wheeler

Crescent Moon in the sunset taken by Honor Wheeler

Waxing Crescent Moon & Earthshine by taken Honor Wheeler.  The moon was 2.62 days old and 8.35% illuminated.

Crescent Moon by taken by John Archer

Crescent Moon taken by Dr Mike Rushton using a Dwarf II smart scope. 1/30 sec x 20 at gain 0 and no filter.

The Moon & Venus by taken Honor Wheeler (Venus is in the top left corner)

Orion, Jupiter and Mars by taken Honor Wheeler. Mars is left of Orion and Jupiter is above Orion.

Members observing at the Pavilion on the 2nd Jan 2025 taken by Honor Wheeler

The Horsehead Nebula taken by Jim Burchell using a Seestar S50 smartscope. 205 stacked images and processed using the Seestar S50 processing software.  The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 or B33) is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion and is located just to the south of the star Alnitak, the eastern most star of Orion's Belt,

The Pleiades (also known as the Seven Sisters or Messier 45 is a young open star cluster in Taurus) taken by Diane Clarke taken using a Seestar S50 smartscope. 85 x 30sec exposures, Jpeg stacked using Seestar S50 internal software.

[caption id="attachment_9838" align="alignnone" width="341"] M 45[/caption][/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

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

After a fantastic night of observing the Aurora, several CMHASD members took the opportunity to observe the huge sunspot AR664 that caused it, at the Parsonage Lane Pavilion the following day.  Below are a selection of photos from that afternoon.

The white light image of the Sun below was taken by member George Buckberry using a Canon EOS760D attached to a Celestron MakC90 fitted with a Baader 5.0ND Solar filter.  All mounted on a Sky-Watcher Alt-Az Mount and Tripod.

Thank you to Diane, Sonia & Jim for sharing your photos.

A few photos showing what members get up to on our 'informal nights' at the Society.  Activities range from observing, testing/setting up members' latest equipment purchased, fixing members' equipment, presentations, general chit chat & banter plus games.

20th July 2023

27th July 2023

Good weather so members took the chance to observe. Dave, Steve & Honor with telescope 'Tinie'.

Member Honor Wheeler's image of the Sun through Society telescope 'Tinie' fitted with a solar filter - built by members Steve Floodgate & Dave Grist.

Thursday 6th July was an informal night at the pavilion and some members took the opportunity to do some observing using Honor's PST to observe the Sun & Jo's Newtonian to observe Venus.  Thankyou to Chairman John Archer and to Diane Clarke for sharing your photos of the evening.

Thursday 21st April 2022 was an informal night at the pavilion and some members took the opportunity to do some observing with some members viewing a very rare sight indeed.

Chairman John Archer summed the evening up in his ebulletin to members dated 27th April 2022. He wrote 'Last week we had another opportunity to get together for an observing evening and a variety of instruments were rolled out – everything from EV Scope and iPhone to Mark 1 eyeball was scanning the night sky.

Members sought out the elusive planet Mercury, and once skies darkened, other more distant objects could be seen.

A flurry of excitement and speculation surrounded the appearance of a mysterious, moving object in the night sky which turned out to be a SpaceX Falcon upper stage conducting a de-orbit burn prior to re-configuring itself into a marine reef / insurance claim – depending on where it finally landed.''

Some objects were also observed using the societies 16" Peter Hindle telescope they were M81, M82, M44 and the Eskimo Nebula.

Below are some images from the evening taken by member Jim Burchell.

Mercury in the constellation Aries just before sunset taken using a Pentax KP 135mm F11.0, Exp 1/2sec &  ISO 800.

The Observatory taken using a Pentax KP 18mm F3.5, Exp 10sec & ISO 800.

Constellation Leo taken using  Pentax KP 48mm F7.1, Exp 2.50sec & ISO 800.

The next 2 images below are snapshots taken from a video that member Steve Goldson managed to capture of the UFO that four other CMHASD members witnessed too at 8.46pm.  The 1st photo shows what looks like a small cloud moving very quickly through the sky.  The 2nd photo shows the same unidentified object a few seconds later now as a bright dot with a cloud in front of it moving through the sky.

The members were perplexed but excited by what they had seen with most sighting it as their 1st UFO.  Later after some detective work by Honor & Sonia it was concluded that they along with Jim Burchell, David Freed and Steve Goldson had witnessed the second stage deorbit of SpaceX Falcon 9 after launching another batch of Starlink internet satellites (Starlink 4-14).

Image taken by Jim Burchell during an observing evening at Sutton-at-Hone.

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Another clear Thursday and an observing evening, below are a couple of images from the session.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by Jim of the Moon and Venus[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image by Leigh of the Flame Nebula and the Horsehead Taken at Sutton-at-Hone[/caption]

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We had clear skies last Thursday (2020/02/06) and had many of the Societies Dobsonian telescopes out, a couple of members bought their own telescopes (both reflectors) and Leigh Slomer produced this image of the Great Orion Nebula (M42).

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image by Leigh Slomer Stack of 27 images at ISO 800 for 30 seconds, 400mm FL Refractor[/caption]

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We had an informal meeting over Christmas where Martin took the members through using AstroImageJ (AIJ) he covered the following...

• Loading an image
• analysing stars in an image
• plate solving an image
• batch processing images to calibrate them
•  aligning and stacking images
• photometry on a sequence of images

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Martin Demonstrating AstroImageJ[/caption]

Final image.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="670"] Comet C/2017 T2 20191201 21:49 Simon Dawes[/caption]

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