This page was last amended on 8th December, 2010.

Carolian Astronomy Society represented at Kidderminster Library's Family Astronomy Day, 5th June 2010 ...

L to R (below): Debbie Huzzard (Secretary), Martin Humphries (Chairman), Carole Worthington (Treasurer) and Roy Huzzard (Member) representing the Carolian Astronomy Society at the Kidderminster Library's Family Astronomy Day.  Martin Humphries also presented a talk called "Life, the Universe and Everything", aimed at parents and children as a simple introduction to astronomy.

Meanwhile Debbie and Carole judged some "rockets" designed and built by children attending, and with Roy recruited a number of new members for the Society.

29th January 2010 - Mars at Opposition.

Photograph: Carole Worthington.  Mars can be seen, more-or-less level with the Moon, to the left of the picture.

Parhelion ("Sundog")

Photograph: Carole Worthington.  A parhelion ("sundog") seen from Clent Hills.  The large bright patch to the left of the picture is the hazy Sun and the parhelion is level with the Sun to the right of the picture.  The rainbow colours to its left and "tail" to the right are typical of a parhelion.  There is a second one, a similar distance to the left of the Sun, not shown in this photograph.

31st January 2009 - Visit to the Spaceguard Centre at Knighton.

This was not an official Carolian Astronomy Society event, but it was organised by one of our members, Bob Cole to the Spageguard Centre at Knighton. This is an independent observatory which monitors the potential threat posed by near earth objects.

The Centre is situated at the top of a hill, reached by, firstly, a narrow country road, then through a gate onto private land and an unmetalled road to the centre itself. Our coach found it impossible to turn off the road and through the gate, so it meant a trek under leaden skies in a strong biting wind to cover the last quarter mile or so! The Centre itself can be seen at the top of the hill.

Photo: Martin Humphries

And here it is once you get there!

Photo: Martin Humphries

And inside, Jay Tate took us on an interesting and entertaining tour, telling us about the potential consequences of different sized objects hitting the Earth. He also showed us some of the equipment used by the Centre to track recently discovered objects and calculate their orbits and the likelihood of an Earth impact in the next 100 years.

Photo: Carole Worthington

An excellent day out and our thanks go to Bob for organising it.

1st August 2008 - Partial eclipse of the Sun - Society's observation meeting.

Our observation meeting at King Charles I School, Kidderminster was held in the spirit of enjoying the spectacle rather than in the interests of serious scientific investigation.

Setting up the Solarscopes. Photo: Chris Ashman

We had a good turn out from our members, and several members of the public turned up as well.

Some of the early arrivals waiting for the eclipse to start. Photo: Chris Ashman

And of course BBC Hereford and Worcester's roving reporter Anita Woodhouse watched the event with us from start to finish.

BBC Hereford and Worcester's Anita Woodhouse. Photo: detail from above

As well as  the School's Solarscopes for easy communal viewing, several of our members took along their own eclipse viewers.

Using an eclipse viewer. Photo: Chris Ashman

The weather was a bit dodgy - mainly cloudy ...  

... but with plenty and frequent breaks.

But, not surprisingly, no sunspots! Photos: Brian Taylor.

This added to the "will it/won't it?" excitement of the event, with occasional shouts of "There it is again!" also adding  to the fun!

The entire event was enjoyed by all present and we considered it to be a great success.

17th May 2008: Sundog:

Inspired by Mike Frost's talk on "Rainbows" at our meeting  on 14th May 2008, Martin Humphries dug out this photograph of a "sundog" that he took in his garden last year. It is the bright rainbow-coloured patch of light immediately above the tree in the centre of the picture.

A sundog, also known as a "false sun" and "parhelion", is caused by reflection and refraction of sunlight in clouds of ice-crystals.

Technical details: Location: 52° 23' 54" N, 02° 14' 00" W, Kidderminster UK, 23rd May 2007 at 18:04 UT, camera Canon 350D, lens focal length 55 mm, film speed (digital equivalent) 400 ISO, aperture f/22, exposure 1/1000th  second, original resolution 4.15 million pixels, JPEG fine-image recording quality. Image resolution reduced to improve internet download speed.

6th May 2008: Mercury and New Moon:

Photograph by Martin Humphries of Mercury (magnitude +1.0), seen to the left of the tree, less than 2° from the 32-hour-old New Moon. Note the earthshine illuminating the otherwise dark face of the Moon. Photograph technical details: Location: 52° 23' 54" N, 02° 14' 00" W, Kidderminster UK. Time 20:36 UT, 6th May 2008. Technical details: Canon 350D, telephoto lens 500mm (digital equivalent), film speed (digital equivalent) 100 ISO, aperture f5.6, exposure 2.5 seconds, resolution 7.96 million pixels, JPEG fine-image recording quality.

6th November 2007: Moon and Venus:

Photographed by Society Treasurer Carole Worthington. Location: Kidderminster UK. Time: 06:48 UT, 6th November 2007.  Nikon D40 SLR, film speed (digital equivalent) 800 ISO, aperture f4.2, exposure 1/60 second, resolution 4.82 million pixels, converted to lower resolution image to reduce file size on web site.

12th August 2007: International Space Station:

Photograph by Martin Humphries of International Space Station with Shuttle Endeavour docked. Photograph technical details: Location: 52° 23' 54" N, 02° 14' 00" W, Kidderminster UK. Time 21:04 UT, 12th August 2007. Technical details: Canon 350D, film speed (digital equivalent) 800 ISO, aperture f3.5, exposure 112 seconds, resolution 4.15 million pixels, JPEG fine-image recording quality converted to lower resolution image to reduce file size on web site.

The satellite is moving from bottom right to top left. The star trails show the effect of the nearly 2-minute time exposure. The fuzzy clouds are also a result of the thin, light cloud slowly moving during the time exposure. The bright star below the satellite's trail near the middle of the picture is Arcturus in the constellation Bootes.

3rd March 2007: The constellation Orion

The above photograph of Orion was taken by Society Secretary Debra Huzzard on the evening of 3rd March 2007at Shrawley, Worcestershire, where our membership had assembled to see the total Lunar eclipse. It was taken with, as she puts it, her "basic digital camera".

The camera was mounted on a tripod and the image is obviously a time-exposure, evidenced by slight star trails. The photograph does, nonetheless, show a great deal of detail, including, peeping through the uppermost branches of the tree, the stars making up Orion's shield or bow. The red colour of Betelgeuse does not come out very well - possibly because of slight over-exposure - despite some digital enhancing using Adobe Photoshop.

The distinctive "V"-shaped open cluster, the Hyades, that makes up part of Taurus, is clearly visible in the top right-hand corner of the picture, and the red colour of Aldebaran (the brightest star in that region) is, like that of Betelgeuse, somewhat washed out. However, all-in-all, this does show that you don't necessarily need specialist equipment to take very acceptable astronomical photographs. 

2006 Total solar eclipse, Libyan Sahara Desert ...

Society Chairman Martin Humphries took these photographs of the 2006 total eclipse of the Sun in the Libyan Sahara Desert ...

In view of the remoteness of the observation site we were surprised at the large number of people there!

Keeping from suffering from sunburn was a major preoccupation of many of us!

We followed the partial phase by using a pair of binoculars as a makeshift solar projector.

Wife Heather is observing the solar phase using a special protective viewer supplied by the British Astronomical Association, with friends Barrie and Lynn in the background.

Well into the partial phase with a similar amount of coverage of the sun as was visible in England.

We used Lynn's straw hat to act as a pinhole camera and projected these multiple images of the partial phase.

Totality!

One strange phenomenon that occurs at totality are these strange sunset colours all around the horizon.

And one of the more nerdish activities that amateur astronomers like to undertake around the time of total solar eclipses is to see the first post-eclipse new moon as soon as possible. This picture was taken about 30 hours after the eclipse.