Astrofest 2026

 It wasn't ALL Telescope Porn!

The Trees on Tour Again: The Great Cluster in Hercules

 

The Summer Beehive Cluster

 

Dwarf

 So this has arrived...

Astrofest

Earlier this month, I went to the exhibition at Astrofest, the European show and conference about all things astronomical.  There were big telescopes for sale (very pricey!), and computer controllers, observation domes, and cameras of many types.

I was bowled over.  And almost tempted to buy the new Dwarf 3 astronomical camera (you point it, using technology pre-sets that include a reasonably large star atlas, and off it goes).  That would be a relatively easy way to get some very good images, and is less expensive than a telescope.  Although a telescope would probably deliver better images overall.

But that got me thinking.  What is it that attracts about astronomy?  There is a certain pleasure in setting up the telescope, fiddling and fettling, adjusting it to point in the right place and focusing on your target.  That is all lost, to varying degrees, by the servomotors that point at the object of your choice, and keep it in scope.    And by the use of cameras rather than the naked eye.  When we went to the Kielder observatory in 2019 there was a real thrill in seeing the Andromeda galaxy through an eyepiece.  Not in imaging it.

So I don't know.  

It is tempting, though...

Uranus

It was a beautifully clear night, last night.  Orion rode high, and to the west of the Hunter lay the Moon and Mars.  Using binoculars, following the advice in various journals, and checking what my Stellarium software showed, I could just pick out a faint star below and to the left of the red planet.

Uranus!

(Be careful how you say it).

More on the Conjunction, from XKCD

 Find the whole wonderful thing here...

The Great Conjunction

 We finally had a clear night tonight.

Looking from the top of the house I could perfectly see Jupiter and Saturn together. It might *just* have been possible to separate them with the naked eye, but with the camera they could be easily separated. With the strongest lens, pictures showed them as separate dots (see below, Saturn is the fainter of the two, at about 11 o clock). Then we tried the binoculars, which also clearly resolved two flecks of light.

They were higher above the horizon than I had expected, and the night was *really* clear, which meant there was a little more time.

So I wrecked the study digging out the 2 1/2 inch refractor bought (from Lidl!) 13 or so years ago, and half assembled it. No spotting scope, no fine controls. And with that we could see the two planets, in the same image, as more than mere dots. The paler Saturn was lower due to image inversion and slightly to the right. Saturn's rings were discernible - everyone saw it as ovoid, and I think I could just make them out. And there was a string of three tiny pearl-like moons stretching out from Jupiter.

Sadly, I can't (yet!) hook the DSLR up to the telescope. But just seeing the two planets together like that was quite amazing.

From the Nasa Website:

'What makes this year’s spectacle so rare, then? It’s been nearly 400 years since the planets passed this close to each other in the sky, and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night, as it will for 2020, allowing nearly everyone around the world to witness this “great conjunction.”' (Click on the images to see them clearly)

Is There Life On Venus?

 Well, we just don't know!  (To quote).  However, The Sky at Night has just beautifully explained the science, the hope and the doubt.  Such Joy!!!

Watch it here.

Real punk steam?

So.  Hornby are celebrating 100 years of selling model railways. And releasing lots of new (and old) stuff in recognition of, basically, longevity.

And although I've gone on about rockets before on this blog (eg here, here, here, here, here, here, here (sort of), here (by extension) and here - and to be fair, other places too).  But Hornby are re-releasing one of my favourite rockets from the sixties.

This one....

All very wonderful, but as a result they may have overshadowed their interesting new 'Steampunk' range.  Labelled as Bassett-Lowke, I suspect to distance them from the main range and pacify the rivet counters.

The new steampunky products  aren't that special at all, but as a move to link together hobbies as diverse as model railways, science fiction and role playing games, this is an interesting development.

So as well as ordering a model of the winner of the Rainhill Trials, I bought a chaotic, steampunky, shabby 0-4-0.

Joy!

Later on the Rye

As noted in an earlier post, the sky above London was clear this morning, and remained clear all day. 

So later, around 5:20, I went out on the East side of the Rye and looked South West.  It took a while, as I had to wait for the sun to set properly.  Venus was already bright. and quite high up.

But eventually, below Venus and to the right (at an angle of about 25-30 degrees), a pale yellow dot appeared.

Mercury.

I'd never (knowingly) seen Mercury before today.  Wow!

Last September, on holiday with the family, we went to the Kielder dark sky observatory.  That was a similarly clear night, eventually.  A terrific night.  And through one of their telescopes I saw the Andromeda galaxy (M31).  Another first.  And lots of other nebulae too, a couple of the superior planets, and also some meteors.

But, in some ways, last night was even better.

It was at least equally cold, though.

Landed!

Well. About 18 months ago, I was given a surprise birthday present by work, a Lego set of the Apollo  XI Saturn V mission, I enjoyed it very much.

A little later I commented that - probably - my favourite spacecraft was the Lunar Lander. 

And then, last Summer, on the anniversary of the first moon landing, I visited the Natural History Museum and Science Museum in London, to look at the moon rock and Charlie Brown.

And now, this Christmas just gone, I was given the Lego Lunar Lander. Wow.

So here it is.  Not stage-by-stage in quite so much detail as the Saturn V.  But still I hope you can see it was a fun build...

 The Eagle has Landed!

Fifty Years On...

Fifty years ago today, I was told to go to bed.

I wasn't allowed to stay up and watch the Apollo 11 Moon Landing on TV.  I was quite annoyed about that.

Later, I remember going to see the tiny piece of moon rock in the the Geological Museum in South Kensington.  And later still, I joined the Astronomical Society of Haringey and met Arthur C. Clarke.

But, given that first landing 50 years ago, I needed a visit to South Kensington.

When you enter what is now a side entrance to the Natural History Museum, you are encouraged upwards.

But if you look around on the ground floor, you come across this:

This isn't the same sample as the one shown briefly in 1969, nor the later display in the 70s.  But it's still moon rock.

Then next door to the Science Museum...

The LEM is actually a copy of the original, made slightly smaller so that it can fit into the gallery.

But just along the way, in the 'Icons' exhibition, is the real thing.  Charlie Brown:

I asked one of the staff if it seemed likely that Snoopy had really been found.  She hedged her bets, and said that if it had, we wouldn't be going out to recapture it any time soon!

The Science Museum also, now, has its own sample of moon rock:

As an aside, the Apollo 10 capsule is surrounded by other numinous objects of space and technology interest.  Like these:

 The Flying Bedstead, that lead to the VTOL aircraft.

 Puffing Billy - the World's oldest surviving steam locomotive.

A V2 missile, as launched by Germany during WWII.

Anyway, having sated on things Apollo, I spent time exploring the museum further, as I hadn't been there for many years.  Foucault's Pendulum has been revamped, the Information Age gallery is new, and the Mathematics display have been completely refurbished.

And that is where a couple of other iconic objects can be found:

But there were other things of great interest, like the Bill Phillips model of the economy:

And the pioneering statistical work by Harriet Martineau and Florence Nightingale:

The space displays have also been updated in many parts, from a mockup of the Huygens lander:

To a huge replica of Bepicolombo:

But, in and amongst all this new material and the many refurbished displays (and I haven't yet mentioned the changes to the Energy gallery where the huge Watt and Newcomen engines are displayed, nor the special exhibition on driverless cars... They will have to be the subject of other posts. And I didn't go to the much hyped Apollo 11 film they are showing), it was good to find some things remained untouched, as I remembered them.

For example, a model credited to Mat Irvine:

And upstairs, in a corner, this: