Astronomical Activities

We are all very excited about the upcoming partial solar eclipse on Friday and attended a presentation about solar eclipses on Saturday at the South Downs Planetarium (http://www.southdowns.org.uk/), which has given us some great ideas about how to view the eclipse safely.

This is very useful as I have only managed to get one pair of solar eclipse viewing glasses to share between the four of us, so I'm planning on making a pinhole camera with December and June and we're also going to dig out a colander to use as a viewer and see how well that works - see this link for an explanation and also other ways of safely viewing a solar eclipse: http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/how-view-eclipse

I remember the eclipse in 1999, the rush of wind just before the Moon completely blocked the Sun's light and, as the day darkened, the deathly hush as all the birds that had been twittering madly fell silent. It was very eerie and I remember feeling very relieved at the return of the light as the Moon moved out of the way of the rays.

The next large partial solar eclipse visible in the UK will be on the 12th August 2026, which is why I am so interested in the one coming up this Friday. The next total solar eclipse visible from the UK won't be until the 23rd September 2090.

In the meantime we have been using binoculars and our small telescope to follow interesting activities in the sky and were particularly delighted to manage to view Comet Lovejoy back in January. Unfortunately, due to lack of equipment (no laptop or digital camera) we were not able to photograph it. However, here is a picture of Venus at sunset taken a couple of days ago on my mobile phone. Mars was also visible to the naked eye (below and to the right of Venus), though it cannot be seen in this picture.

Venus at sunset

I also tried to take some photos of Orion but that was just too much for my mobile to manage - I must get a proper camera as soon as I am able.