We have just passed the Summer Solstice on 21st June where our Sun reached its highest point in the sky and gave us the longest day of the year. But back in May the Sun kicked out more than just sunlight. You may have seen in the news that around the world the night sky was lighting up in multi colours. On the evening of May 10th you may have even been out yourself…

Image Credit: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov In 1977 when at college in Coventry I met a very nice fellow student and my world changed. In 1982 we got married. Since then on odd occasions she says I talk gibberish. She’s usually right. Another world changing event occurred in 1977. The launch of the space probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 that took advantage of a rare lining up of the outer planets. These craft delivered many surprises…

It’s been a while since we saw a Auroral display like this in Cornwall, but on the night of 10/11 May, many club members from as far as South and West in Newlyn, to as North and East in Carnewas were treated to one of nature’s greatest lightshows. But’s let go back a few days and show the progression of Sunspot AR3664 which produced the spectacular display we saw a few days later. We…

Looking up at a Chinese night sky Confucius poetically said: “Stars are holes in the sky from which the light of the infinite shines.” Scientifically, we now know that the stars are actually giant balls of hydrogen converting to helium in a nuclear fusion process and kicking out huge amounts of heat, light, plasma, particles and radiation in the process. But is our Sun a “normal” size and “type” of star and how does it compare…

by Dean Ashton, April 2024 There are many examples where we image an object that is predominantly a full continuumspectrum object, a galaxy or a reflection nebula for example, but it also contains emissionline nebulae components. Capturing both a full spectrum RGB image and narrowbandemission image which are then combined may reveal more information about the objectand create a more interesting and complete image. With so many new advances in Pixinsight processing methods, one…

You will probably have heard of the Hubble Space Telescope. It has orbited our planet 333 miles up since 1990 and has spectacularly opened up our view of the Universe with many beautiful images and discoveries. It was named after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. He fought in the Great War and when he returned in 1919, Hubble joined the Mount Wilson Observatory with its 100-inch mirror Hooker Telescope that was the most powerful…