The Gosport u3a. group on stargazing meets once a month in The Vine, a local pub that has been converted into a cafe. There’s usually 5 or 6 of us. It’s a casual get together, and a good opportunity for like minded people to have a good chat.
Whilst it won’t always work, I try to walk away from each session with a task. The previous one had been to compile an observing diary, which involved my checking each night to see whether I could observe the sky. Whilst I didn’t observe at every opportunity, there were several times when I did. For no other reason than to get a bit familiar with the night sky.
For most of my life, I’ve known some of the obvious sights, Orion, The ploughs, the Pole Star, things like that. The nights i observed were a real education. I enjoyed them, a lot.
Last month’s meeting was my opportunity to present the diary and talk about some of the interesting moments in it.
We use three books to get some information about what is happening in the night sky each month;
Nigel Henbest Stargazing
The Collins Guide to the Night Sky
The Ladybird book of the Stars and their Legends (the edition I have is dated 1973)
When we read through events due to happen in April, the main one that leapt out of us was the Lyrid Meteor Shower. Called the Lyrids because most of the meteors appear to come out of the constellation Lyrae. Peak activity would occur at around 0200 on the night of 22 – 23. I said to the leader of the group, Antony, that I would try to stay up and watch the sky at that time. Obviously, dependent upon the weatther.
As it happens, the sky was clear, and I had a very good view of Vega, the main star in Lyrae. I didn’t have as much of a problem staying up as I thought I would. Indeed, when I did finally go to bed at 0245, I really didn’t feel tired, and thought I would have problems getting to sleep. No chance, I was out after a couple of minutes.
So, how did the nights observing go? Well, I had intended to take one of those counting devices out with me to count the many tens of meteors that I hoped to see. It turns out that I didn’t need it. How many meteors did I see? None, not one. I did see one very faint satellite.
Interestingly, tonight on the Thursday Night Net, I was talking to a friend of mine M0XPJ, Julian. As the crow flies, he lives about 15 miles from us. He told us that he had been out observing at the same time, and he had also reported seeing no meteors. So it wasn’t just me.
Julian also introduced me to a new device. Constellationo Binoculars. They are 2.1×50, that doesn’t sound right does it? why have low magnification? But the exit pupil is huge (that means a lot of light is getting to your eyes, from a wide field of view. Weird, but I’ve been reading and watching good things about them. I’ve bought a pair. They’ll take a couple of weeks to turn up, which is a bit frustrating as the next stargazing get-together is next Monday. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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