As you may know, we are at the mercy of the clouds when we desire a peep into the universe from the Great Equatorial Telescope. Sometimes, the weather just doesn’t play ball and, when that happens, ROG’s astronomers will still delight us with a variety of backup astronomy related programs to compensate. However, on this […]
An excellent session started off rather dubiously as a not so familiar obstacle threatened our stargazing night. It wasn’t the clouds this time but a funfair, just several yards away from us! Admittedly, a rush of childhood nostalgia swept over me and I was tempted to go in, head for the bumper cars and demonstrate […]
Astrobiology, said Professor Lewis Dartnell, is “the science of hunting for aliens”! That may conjure up images of Martian death rays, wielded by tripods come to invade the earth. But if our next door neighbour planet ever did have an environment that was suitable for the origin of microbial life on the surface, the environment […]
Once again, the Flamsteed were delighted to be invited to participate in the Shrewsbury Park Summer Festival this year, set on top of Shooters Hill with fabulous views over London, Kent and Essex. In fine weather this is a perfect spot for astronomy, and our plan was to provide several solar telescopes for people to […]
For the final lecture of our 2015/16 season, Flamsteed members were given a real treat when Dr Matt Taylor from ESA came to talk about the Rosetta mission. Matt is the Project Scientist for this mission, working as the interface between the scientists responsible for the experiments on the mission and the ESA mission operation […]
The Flamsteed Radio Astronomy Group continues to make good progress. At the last meeting on Tuesday 7 June 2016, the group had 5 VLF (Very Low Frequency) receivers up and running in an attempt to compare performance. A Very Low Frequency (VLF) Receiver is designed to record Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance (SIDs) induced by solar flares. […]
Our observing session on Blackheath this Saturday was again in danger of being cancelled due to bad weather. At least that’s what each of the 6 forecasting sites I looked at said. However one did say it was going to be patchy cloud instead of a thick blanket and it also seemed to be agreeing […]
The ROG was preparing for new galleries called ‘Observatory Lives’ focusing on two of the Astronomers Royal, Maskelyne and Airy, and their families who lived at the Observatory in Flamsteed House. By way of contrast, Graham Dolan spoke to us about some of the nineteenth century assistants at the Observatory, people who did the work […]
Report by Mike Meynell Early on the morning of Monday 9 May 2016, the day of the Transit of Mercury, things were not looking good. Nick Phillips and I were exchanging emails after consulting the various weather forecasts for the day. They all said the same thing… cloud… lots of it… followed by rain. So, […]
A party from the History Group enjoyed a visit to the RMG Caird Library to look at a selection of rare and interesting books from the astronomy collection. The visit was hosted by Gareth Bellis and Stawell Heard of the library staff, and by Louise Devoy, Curator of the ROG. The books were divided into […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.