King's Lynn and District Astronomy Society

Promoting astronomy for all ages across West Norfolk

Archive: Astronomy

Kings Lynn Lions Fun Day

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Just a short post with some great photos of our recent Solar Outreach day at the Walks Park in Kings Lynn a couple of weeks back. This was at the annual Lions Fun day, we had great fun showing the general public the delights of Astronomy and most prominently Solar Astronomy. It was a beautifully sunny day which allowed the best views of the Sun I’ve seen all year. We fully intend to go back next year, and will let you all know once next years date is organised.

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iPhone shot of the Sun through a Coronado PST Solar Scope. Image by: Andy Milner

 

 

Our recent visit to Shouldham Primary School

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I just wanted to thank Shouldham Primary School for last Saturday 18th April , your staff, your pupils and the Friends of School for making us so welcome yesterday. You are to complemented on the enthusiasm and depth of knowledge of your pupils.

We hope that our visit made the day even more enjoyable. We certainly enjoyed every minute of our time spent with you and your school.

Finally, I hope you get many hours of enjoyment out of the telescopes you purchased and that it will inspire pupils and staff to take a greater interest in the Cosmos.

John Craythorne
Chairman

April Night Sky Guides

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At the beginning of each month we will post links to some popular guides to help you plan and decide what to view or image.

Awesome Astronomy prepare a short Audio guide and this months guide is focused on Galaxies. As the constellations Virgo and Leo are nicely placed there is a plethora of galaxies to choose from…
Check out their guide here: http://www.awesomeastronomy.com/

Paul Money posts his guide each month and you can find his here:
http://www.astrospace.co.uk/Astrospace/monthly-sky/monthlynightsky.html

Telescope House prepare a nice guide here: http://www.telescopehouse.com/acatalog/Telescope-House-Monthly-Sky-Guide.html

For Binocular users http://binocularsky.com/ will soon publish his guide for April so head over to this website, click on Newsletter then click on Current issue. As of 31st March the newsletter is still the March edition, please visit this on the 1st or near after for an updated April edition. Steve Tonkin does a great job of providing some tips and targets to view with your binoculars. Its worth looking around his website for tips too on buying a new pair of bins for astronomy use.

You can download a skymap for the northern hemisphere for April here:
http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html  Click on the download link for April Northern Hemisphere.

Please find a skychart I have made for April for our location dated April 15th at midnight. I have prepared this in black and white for easy printing.

April SkyChart Tottenhill

Well all that remains is for me to say Happy Easter and Clear Skies!

Thank you Dr Simon Sheridan

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Thank you to Dr Simon Sheridan for a really interesting talk last evening for his talk on Rosetta – Landing on a Comet from Planning to Reality.

Special thanks to Ray Price for arranging Dr Sheridans visit last night, the talk on the Rosetta and Philae mission was excellent and being able to see and touch the replica pieces to Ptolemy (Philae Lander) and Beagle 2 and also hold a piece of Mars was fantastic.

Dr Sheridan was really nice guy and his willingness to stay and chat for so long after the talk was an unexpected bonus.

Dr Simon Sheridan’s key activities include:

  • Development of the gas handling and processing system on the Ptolemy instrument (Rosetta Lander)
  • The development of miniature mass spectrometers for sub-surface deployment by either low-speed mole or high-speed penetrator devices
  • The development of Carbon Nano Tube devices for use as low power mass spectrometer ionisation sources

Put simply this guy designed the major parts of Ptolemy which will analyse samples from the comet to help us understand what it is and more about the beginnings of our solar system.

You can follow the ESA team on twitter:-
Ptolemy team:  https://twitter.com/Philae_Ptolemy
and the whole ESA Rosetta Team here https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta

Once again a massive thank you to Ray, who unfortunately had to leave early, get well soon.
Clear skies to all.

Tonights Talk – Rosetta – Landing on a Comet by Dr Simon Sheridan

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Landing on a Comet – from planning to reality

Dr Simon Sheridan – Research European Space Agency, Associate Lecturer of Open University in Planetary sciences.  Working on the Rosetta project, in particular the Ptolemy lander will give an interesting talk about the mission and an insight in to what is happening next.

He has promised to bring a selection of items from previous missions i.e. Mars Lander, Titan Probe, Meteorites etc.rosetta_poster hobo std

Stargazing Live

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Following on from the very successful Junior Star Gazing Live in January. We held a Star Gazing Live event to coincide with the BBC programmes.

The event was opened by our patron Henry Bellingham MP and Councillor John W Doyle, Mayor of Downham Market.

Henry Bellingham MP, John Craythorne, John W Doyle, Mayor of Downham Market

Henry Bellingham MP, John Craythorne, John W Doyle, Mayor of Downham Market

There were static displays of telescopes and Astronomical equipment, a scale model of the solar system, information on the sun and some excellent pictures of the partial solar eclipse from 20th March 2015.

There was great advice available about what sort of telescope to choose for a beginner and how to take photographs of the moon and stars.

Crowds descend upon Junior Stargazing Live!

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The King’s Lynn & District Astronomy Society held a Junior Star Gazing Live event at Tottenhill Village Hall on Saturday 17th January which was aimed at introducing children to the pleasures of astronomy. The age group we aimed to attract was from 5 to 16 years of age. The scheduled time for the event was 2.00pm to 6.oopm and as this was the first “Junior” event we unsure of how well it would be attended, we were therefore very pleased when by 2.10pm we had 30 people through the gates. The final tally of visitors was 253 with the final visitors leaving at 6.20pm so we can safely say that it was a very successful event albeit a tiring one for the KLADAS members who set up the exhibits, telescopes and made the teas and coffees.

We had visitors from schools, scouts as well as the general public and everyone seemed to enjoy the day and we had a lot of enquiries from people asking how much it costs to join and how often we have talks and observations so we are quietly confident that we will see an increase in the future membership. We had a couple of people who had brought their telescopes which they had either been given or recently purchased and we managed to set them up for them and invite them to come to one of the observation nights to have further instruction in how to get the best from their telescopes.

We had set up models of the planets in the solar system along the length of the village hall, books on astronomy, competitions, computers running free astronomy software that anyone can download onto their computers at home & will show them what they can see in the night skies. We had astrophotographs taken by members of the Society on display. Telescopes were set up outside, two of which had solar filters so the visitors could look at the sun and see sunspots whilst the sun was out. We had set up a photograph of Pluto some 300 yards away so that telescopes without solar filters could be used to show the magnification of our telescopes and binoculars. When the sun went down we used the telescopes to look at objects in the night sky e.g. M42 the Pleiades, the constellation of Orion etc. The adults as well as the children were fascinated by just how many stars are visible through a telescope compared with those visible with the naked eye.

The next Open day will be March 21st 2pm-8pm to co-incide with BBC’s Stargazing Live 3 day programme. The theme will be the Sun and the Moon.

Astronomers Discover Ancient System with Five Small Planets

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Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler mission have discovered a planetary system of five small planets dating back to when the Milky Way galaxy was a youthful two billion years old.

The tightly packed system, named Kepler-444, is home to five planets that range in size, the smallest comparable to the size of Mercury and the largest to Venus. All five planets orbit their sun-like star in less than ten days, which makes their orbits much closer than Mercury’s sweltering 88-day orbit around the sun.

“While this star formed a long time ago, in fact before most of the stars in the Milky Way, we have no indication that any of these planets have now or ever had life on them,” said Steve Howell, Kepler/K2 project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “At their current orbital distances, life as we know it could not exist on these ancient worlds.”

Kepler-444 formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 20 percent its current age. This makes Kepler-444 the oldest known system of terrestrial-size planets, two and a half times older than the Earth.

To determine the age of the star and thus its planets, scientists measured the very small change in brightness of the host star caused by pressure waves within the star. The boiling motion beneath the surface of the star generates these pressure waves, affecting the star’s temperature and luminosity. These fluctuations lead to miniscule changes or variations in a star’s brightness. This study of the interior of stars is called asteroseismology and allows the researchers to measure the diameter, mass and age of a star.

The Kepler-444 system is approximately 117 light-years away toward the constellation Lyra. A paper reporting this discovery is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit NASA

Trans-Neptunian study suggests Solar System contains more planets

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Astronomers have spent decades debating whether some dark trans-Plutonian planet remains to be discovered within the Solar System. According to the calculations of scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) not only one, but at least two planets must exist to explain the orbital behaviour of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO).

For the whole story read Astronomy Now

Comet Lovejoy puts on a show in the winter sky

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Comet Lovejoy, glowing at 4th magnitude, is now in its best two weeks. It’s nicely placed high in the early-evening sky for your binoculars or low-power, wide-field telescope. It may be dimly visible to the unaided eye under excellent dark-sky conditions — if you know exactly where to look!

Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, is now having its best two weeks for skywatchers. It’s 4th magnitude, about as bright as it’s predicted to get. Use the finder charts at the bottom of this page to find its location among the stars. Although 4th magnitude would technically make it a naked-eye object, its diffuse fuzziness means that most viewers, who live under light pollution, will probably still need binoculars.

Sky & Telescope