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For once the Sun shone on the centre of the known universe – Birmingham! Clear skies from beginning to end with some high stuff about at times, but didn’t spoil the fun. Visual for me of course with a 22cm stopped to 10cm and (ancient) solar screen. Then took BAA eclipse viewer to my community library where I give IT classes and showed a lot of people the second half of the eclipse. I also bought some BAA viewers for my grandchildren, who took them to school and at mid eclipse, all the school (small school ~75 kids) was in the playground passing them around and seeing it in real time. A bit of a result all round I would say!
Gary
Hi Jeremy,Here are my Birmingham stats. Last years numbers in brackets!Observable nights (not counting brief gaps) = 112 (93)37 (59) clear and 75 (34) partially clear (50% cloud or more). Of these 112 nights 53 had Moonlight interference.Best month – Feb & July with 13 nights each (April with 12 nights)Worst month – September with 6 nights (January with 3 nights)Number of hours spent at eyepiece = 247.27 hours (191.18 hours)The weather forecast (for Birmingham) for cloudy/clear nights was incorrect on 53 (60) occasions, so a slight improvement for the Met. office!The sky conditions continue to deteriorate here in Birmingham, with increased light pollution and the clarity of the sky worsening year after year – for reasons which I can’t explain. The Milky Way was ‘glimpsed’ on just one occasion in 2014 – Aug 4th.Look forward to seeing other members stats for 2014.Happy New Year!GaryThanks for the greetings Paul. Have a Happy Christmas yourself – and everyone in the BAA too of course 🙂
Gary
R CrB is now visible with binoculars for the first time since 2007. As of the evening of Oct 11 it could be seen with 10×50’s (from Brum) at magnitude 8.8. The rise at the moment is ~0.1 mag every 2 days, but this could change of course in the coming days/weeks.
This looks as if it could be the recovery we have waited 7 years for.
Gary
Indeed Howard. The recovery started around April/May this year, and R CrB is now at it’s brightest level for 15 months or so. The previous partial recovery was slow, taking around 18 months to complete 4 magnitudes. This one is rather steeper, taking just over 3 months to cover the same magnitude. Might this mean that R CrB will get brighter this time? We will have to wait and see.
I’ve uploaded an up-to-date light curve from BAAVSS observers to the front page of the VSS web pages. Unless anything else interesting happens I’ll try to keep this plot updated weekly and post to the web site, so that we can all see if this recovery is the real deal or not.
Clears skies,
Gary
Hi Martin,
Thanks for the tip. As a big Will Hay fan I’ll be recording it (although I have seen it).
We had a Will Hay night at the Heart of England AS last year – DVD’s shown on big screen, with the support act being several episodes of Shaun the Sheep. Astronomy can be fun in many ways, especially at the HoEAS! The room was full too 🙂
Gary
Just gave my votes Nick. Good idea! Must find time to go through your archive and vote too.
Stray dog or mad dog? 😉
Gary
OK Nick. I’ll give it a try and contact you offline.
I still had a few issues with Win7 whilst streaming. The video(s) would stop every 10 minutes, and I had to click to continue! Didn’t stop me enjoying John Mason and David Boyds presentations though. Hope to watch the rest over the weekend. Good stuff.
Gary
Nick,
I have no audio on any of the video’s whilst watching online – Windows 8 using Chrome. If I try IE I get logged out each time I select a video.
Gary
It will be 600 years since Agincourt on Oct 25 2015, so I vote for Henry V or a silhouette of an archer drawing a yew bow. Nothing to do with astronomy, but who cares. No one reading this will be alive for the next centenary, so lets celebrate! Much more interesting than dormant Cometary nuclei anyway 😉
Gary
Hi Dave,
Glad to hear you’ve come back to us. Might we see some of your VS observations in the VSS database now? 😉
Hope we’ll get to see you at a few meetings. I think we’ve only met once at a VS meeting a few years ago (a VS workshop wasn’t it?). Be good to catch up face to face rather than e-mail.
Clear skies,
Gary
Hi Cameron,
Excellent image. Well done. I’m just a few miles North of you in Birmingham, and know how difficult astronomy can be from our orange skies. This is very good indeed!
Keep up the good work.
Gary
Nick,
I would very much like to set up a database of amateur spectra of VS and link it to the VSS website. Roger and I have spoken briefly about this, and he seems to be ‘up for it’ too. I’m hopeful that we can discuss further at the VS meeting (York, June 21 see BAAVSS website) and move on from there. The AAVSO have been slow to move into this field, so I would like to see the VSS take the initiative.
Robin: Very impressive stuff at this faint limit. Many congratulations. I was singing your praises to Bradford AS last night, where I was speaking on Historical Novae. I’m pretty sure they will be contacting you with a view to a possible talk to their group sometime in the future.
Gary
I’ll be at Milton Keynes too, and as a variable star observer myself would be delighted to meet you to discuss the section and VS in general.
What’s your name by the way? There seems to be no current link to a profile for anyone posting to the forum at the moment.
Gary
The most surprising thing about this is the amount of these ‘fakes’ which appear on APOD (which I hardly ever look at by the way). My daughter sends me images from APOD and other sources saying “have you seen this?”. I have to deflate her somewhat and say it’s a fake. I just don’t get it.
Gary
