A few minutes before the Flamsteed’s first session with the Great Equatorial Telescope began, members were sat in the cafeteria guessing what our backup program might entail, for all we saw outside were clouds everywhere we looked. But then ROG’s astronomer, Brendan Owens, approached us with his usual beaming grin of optimism and told us […]

The exhibition called Observatory Life in the ‘astronomer’s apartments’ at the ROG has been under development for some time.  It tells the stories of two of the Astronomers Royal and their families who lived and worked at the Observatory.  The curator of the Royal Observatory, Dr Louise Devoy, generously agreed to show us round the […]

A total of 25 Flamsteed members made the trip down to Herstmonceux on Saturday 15 July 2017, for a visit to Herstmonceux Castle and the Observatory Science Centre. We had a guided tour of Herstmonceux Castle in the morning, followed by a tour of all the telescope domes at the Observatory Science Centre in the […]

Blue Streak and Thor-Able

Report by Christina Chester Everything about the National Space Centre in Leicester is suggestive of the grandeur and excitement of space travel. A visit, arranged for Saturday 17th June by Mike Meynell, gave Flamsteed members the opportunity to see this attraction that’s dedicated to space exploration and space science. Upon entering the National Space Centre’s […]

Bobby Manoo gave an excellent talk about “amazing astronomical alignments”. Bobby was inspired during a visit to Egypt when he saw the pyramids and especially the temple at Abu Simbel. He began with a short introduction to the equinoxes and solstices, and a look at the ‘analemma’ pattern traced out by the position of the […]

On Monday April 10, 2017 we had the pleasure of a visit to the NMM Caird Library to look at some of the terrific books, maps, and charts related (vaguely!) to astronomy.   Our visit was hosted by Louise Devoy (Curator of the ROG), Megan Barford (Curator of Cartography), and Gareth Bellis (Manager of the Library). […]

Dr Edward Yeadon

The talk to the History of Astronomy Group was a bit off-piste this time. As Eddie said in his introduction, it could be argued that the subject was neither history nor astronomy. But for a subject so central to modern astronomy any exception was well worthwhile. As well as capturing the public’s imagination as never […]

Endeavour Room

On Saturday March 25th we ran tours of the Altazimuth Pavilion (‘Altaz’) and Endeavour Room at the ROG so Flamsteed members could see these interesting spaces which are not open to the public. The tours were a try-out both to see if members were interested in this type of weekend event, and to see if […]

For the third time in a row, our Flamsteed observation sessions on the Great Equatorial Telescope were blessed with clear skies and, once again, one of our ROG Astronomers maximised the opportunity to making it a night to remember for our Flamsteed members. This time around, it was ROG’s own ‘rock star’ astronomer, Tom Kerss whom […]

A workshop meeting of the Radio Astronomy special interest group took place at Mycenae House on the 7th December 2016. Owing to the usual pre-Christmas commitments, a number of the regular attendees were absent, but this didn’t prevent some useful discussions taking place. The workshop started with a discussion on the data collected by the […]