On Saturday 13th April I'd hoped to go to the Observatory and image the occultation of the Beehive cluster by the Moon but alas Diane and I had forgotten that we were taking part in a local RSPB quiz. We've taken part on a number of other occasions with fellow member Deborah and David, her husband, who are also keen bird watchers, so we had said yes to this quiz before we knew about the events clashing.
The skies were still clear after the quiz so we headed to the observatory, we got to the Pavilion at about 22:30BST (21:30UT) to find that no one else was using it. We imaged the Moon with the Beehive cluster from the patio then imaged some lunar craters and took a tour around the sky with the 16". The skies remained clear until 02:10BST at which time Diane and I packed up and went home.
4 Members and 2 ex-Members travelled to the Kelling Heath Star Party, this star party has notoriously poor weather, but on this occasion we were blessed with reasonable views on Wednesday night and clear skies from dusk 'till dawn on Thursday Night, Friday Morning.
Many, many objects were observed with Keith's 10" Dobsonian and Simon's 12" Truss Dobsonian, Julian and another Simon both allowed us to view objects with their 20" Dob's.
We had a clear night on Thursday 21st February 2019, and before the Moon rose a few members had a go at the Orion Star Count, showing the diversity of eyesight and experience in our group.
The moon rose above the trees as a golden gibbous Moon and some of our group took to observing it with one of the Societies telescopes, affectionately known as Anita.
On the right is an image from Honor Wheeler taken through Anita, a Fuller Scopes 8" F8 recently converted to a Dobsonian by a couple of our members.
Other members were experimenting with the new CCD camera purchased by the society for the Peter Hindle telescope, a 16" LX200, using the F3.3 focal reducer we got a wide field view of the Orion nebula (M42) and M1 the Crab nebula.
A cloudy January resulted in a small number of meteors detected, 97 in total, most sporadic, but we did detect 20 Quadrantid's and identified meteors from 17 different showers.
If you want to join in and help with the observations please contact Janice.
We were treated with some lovely clear skies in the mornings of January 2019 and members were able to capture a few images of the conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter.
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The Dick Chambers Observatory was open for observing the 'blood moon' on the evening/morning of the 20th-21st January and for a change the weather was good. Other members observered from their homes and below are a few images by members.
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Our automated meteor camera and meteor team, detected 239 meteors in December, despite the cloudy weather, 60 of these were identified as part of the Geminid meteor shower. The brightest meteor detected was a magnitude of -1.8. During December we identified meteors from 22 different showers, but the geminids was by far the strongest.
Below is a video of the meteors detected by the meteor camera operated by the society, in December 2018, the meteors are ordered by brightness based on analysis by UFO analyser.
