Society for Popular Astronomy

4th September 2019, Wednesday, 0202-0218 BST: Awoke to find large cumulus clouds passing with good gaps of very clear skies. Used Mighty Midget 2 spotting scope from the back garden, to find NEPTUNE , now very near to phi Aquarii, making a neat tiny isosceles triangle with it and the faintish adjace...

I am continuing to follow these three binocular objects. The last set of sightings follow. Friday 30/08/19; 0018-0106 BST. Thus sky was mainly clear with rather poor transparency low down and a band of cumuli passing west to east in the low south. Used Olivon T50 spotter and observed both URANUS (ob...

The Mile Oak valley was once quite rural but since all the building that has taken place, I have not heard a Tawny Owl for years, although pipistrelle bats do hunt around the Park. The cat tends to observe with me, the previous one used to appear up the Park when I went there. If I observe from an o...

Interesting story...I have not come across this before. While sitting in a deckchair in the dark garden plotting Perseids on Norton's when I was a lad in the early 1960s, a snuffling sound of a creature rather put the wind-up me, and so grabbed the touch and searched around my feet and..... there, i...

29/08/19, O513-0515 BST (0413-0415 GMT). Just appearing over the distant rooftops across the Park and seen from the bedroom window, the old Crescent Moon rising and managed to take a couple of photographs which also show the Earthshine. New Moon will be at 30th August, 10h 38m. so this crescent was ...

Comet 2018W2 (Africano) will be well-placed, running through Perseus, Andromeda , Pegasus and Pisces during September although the magnitude range suggested in seem to between 10.5 to about a magnitude of so brighter according to the article in Astronomy Now.. It suggests that it should be visible i...

Sunday, 25/8/19. Another clear early morning. 0035- 0111 BST. Mainly clear sky with some cirrus. Used Celestron Landscout 60mm spotter at 12x. This has a 45 deg eyepiece making location slightly more difficult but much easier when viewing objects higher up in the sky. Looked at URANUS again (obs #14...

24/8/19, A very bright, colourful and long lasting circumzenithal arc, seen from about 5pm till 6.30pm, and photographed. And it is still there as I write this is still there ...6.45pm...... 24/8/29, an extremely bright LH sundog (parhelion) at times almost too bright to look at, and when photograph...

There does not seem to be much observing taking place and/or being reported here at the moment, so thought it worthwhile posting the following set of sightings made this morning from Sussex. Saturday, 24/8/19. URANUS, 0037-0112 BST. Moon rising but hidden from view. Clear sky with a few bits of thin...

This morning, Friday, 23/8/19, 0440 BST, went out into the garden for another look at Uranus , high in the south and...there climbing over the southeastern rooftops was "The Hunter" , so turned the spotting scope onto the fuzzy sword for the first time this apparition. "The Twins"...

All the comets that I have seen have been pretty bright, no fainter than about magnitude 8, and any fainter would be beyond my equipment to see. Magnitude 11 would be hopelessly faint for me! There has been a dearth of binocular comets lately, this year only Comet Iwamoto C/2018Y1 which swam into my...

At least the in-the-sky page (which I had not seen) gives the predicted possible maximum magnitude as 11.5
which is not "bright" in my book and would not be of interest to the general public or even casual skywatchers or even me! Regards maf

Yes, Skyhawk, that is indeed the piece. The truth, from Seiichi Yoshida's page is "it has not been observed yet this apparition. Now it is fainter than 21.5 mag...was expected to be brighten to 12 mag...but actually must be much fainter..." There really is so much junk upon the Internet. A...

Was presented on the Internet with the following news concerning " Huge Comet will be visible ...here is how and when to see it. Next Thursday .Likely to be naked eye. Etc etc"...and the Comet named as 168/P Hergenrother!!! I believe that it has NOT been recovered since its return six year...

13/8/19, 0057-0126 BST, in between struggling to locate Uranus again under a sky described as "poor transparency and nearly Full Moon", I did see just one bright Perseid at about 0103 BST dropping straight down near to Capella. That was it, the moonlight being the real killer! The weather ...