In partnership with Raygill Astronomy Club
August can be a spectacular month so far as the night sky is concerned. A picturesque parade of planets stretches across the southern sky in the early evening. From beautiful Venus in the west, through giant Jupiter and duller Saturn to the glorious red planet Mars. We also have one of the main meteor showers of the year, the Perseids. The Plough lies...
Read MoreThe only known image of Thomas Cooke The members Keighley astronomical society who attended the June monthly meeting learnt about Thomas Cooke. The man from East Yorkshire who by the end of his life, in 1868, he had put Britain at the forefront of optical engineering in Europe. The guest speaker was Mr Martin Lunn OBE, FRAS. Who researched the life and...
Read MoreAs we move into high summer, the sun turns southwards, our nights begin to lengthen and the moonless spell later in the month brings many of us our first dark skies of the summer. The Plough is in the north west as the Summer Triangle reaches the high meridian. Formed by the bright stars Vega, Altair and Deneb, in the constellations Lyra, Aquila and Cygnus...
Read MoreSociety secretary Dominic Curran visited Armagh Observatory and Planetarium last week. Armagh Planetarium was established by the seventh director of Armagh Observatory, Dr. Eric Mervyn Lindsay, who, after twenty five years of effort, secured funding from local councils and the Ministry of Commerce of Northern Ireland in 1965. In the same year Patrick Moore...
Read MoreThe Milky Way. Photographed by society member Richard Crabtree, near Settle, North Yorkshire. This month brings our summer solstice on the 21st of this month Venus, Saturn and Jupiter are brilliant, despite skies that hardly grow dark in midsummer. Only the brightest stars can be seen. Those bright stars include Vega in Lyra, which is high in the eastern...
Read More
