On Saturday, 18th January 2020, we gathered on Blackheath Common looking thoughtfully up at what the night sky was offering. Members with telescopes entertained the public with views into the cosmos, trying to dodge the cloud patches that skimmed past, and as the evening rolled on, whimpers could be heard as the cold air was […]
As you may know, we are at the mercy of the clouds when we desire a peep into the universe from the Great Equatorial Telescope. Sometimes, the weather just doesn’t play ball and, when that happens, ROG’s astronomers will still delight us with a variety of backup astronomy related programs to compensate. However, on this […]
An excellent session started off rather dubiously as a not so familiar obstacle threatened our stargazing night. It wasn’t the clouds this time but a funfair, just several yards away from us! Admittedly, a rush of childhood nostalgia swept over me and I was tempted to go in, head for the bumper cars and demonstrate […]
Our observing session on Blackheath this Saturday was again in danger of being cancelled due to bad weather. At least that’s what each of the 6 forecasting sites I looked at said. However one did say it was going to be patchy cloud instead of a thick blanket and it also seemed to be agreeing […]
Report by Mike Meynell Early on the morning of Monday 9 May 2016, the day of the Transit of Mercury, things were not looking good. Nick Phillips and I were exchanging emails after consulting the various weather forecasts for the day. They all said the same thing… cloud… lots of it… followed by rain. So, […]
Friday 11th saw us returning to Blackheath for an observing session. After what seemed like a never ending spell of bad weather which had caused previous observing sessions to be cancelled, we finally got a break! Unfortunately while generally clear, the evening had a quantity of dew in the air which significantly reduced what we […]
On the evening of Tuesday 8 March, a group of Flamsteed members visited the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. The members were treated to a short talk on the astrophysics of star formation by one to institute’s research students, Nimisha Kumari. She outlined her work comparing star formation rates between nearby galaxies to gain a […]
An impromptu session was arranged on Blackheath this morning to view the total eclipse of the Moon. A few hardy souls turned up at 3am to view totality, and what a spectacular view it was. More pictures will be added to this report as they are received. If you took any pictures of the eclipse, […]
Our August observing event took place on Saturday August 1st under clear skies. This was a pleasant surprise, as the weather forecast had suggested a slight preference for holding the event on our backup date of Friday. After much dithering it was decided to proceed with Saturday as planned, which turned out to be excellent. […]
Report by Rupert Smith Following a successful FAS Members Solar Observing event at the ROG, we setup on Blackheath in preparation for the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. The event started before the scheduled 9pm while the skies were still quite bright (and clear – more on that later!). Right from the start we had […]
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