The Astronomy Centre was ready.......the equipment was prepared.......visitors,members and staff attending and anticipating the forthcoming rare event event, but.....the Pennine weather ruled the day!

During preparations on the morning of the 11th the cloudy and wet weather seemed to be breaking up and we were more optimistic of a successful observation of the long awaited Mercury Transit across the face of the sun.

Peter had prepared 150mm refractors, a 200mm reflector with white light filters, 70 and 150mm Hydrogen Alpha telescopes. A live view camera attached to one of the 150mm refractors fed an image to the large screen monitor.

To complement our preparations the AC provided an Internet feed showing the live event streaming services from observatories across the world. This was just as well because around the time of the predicted first  contact our local clouds rolled in to completely obscure the solar disk. Observers all turned to the Internet relays to see the tiny disk of Mercury creep onto the giant solar disk. We still hoped for a glance at the `real thing` using the AC equipment during the afternoon but apart for a fleeting image on the monitors of racing clouds, nothing further was seen. Observers had to content themselves with the streaming Internet images- better than nothing.

All ages of visitors attended from 2 years old to 70 +, AC members keepng the group informed and entertained as best as possible. The weather threw everything at the site during the afternoon, hail, wind, rain and even a glimpse of blue sky - but in the wrong place.

See you for the next one in 2032?

 Thanks to Paul Yates who found a gap in the clouds over Oakworth, West Yorkshire to capture Mercury just after T2

 early in the transit. Well done Paul... a fine effort under difficult conditions.

System down at present....hope to be live soon.

Click   here   for local seeing conditions using the TESS Sky photometer mounted on the side of the main dome ( full site data ). Graph at bottom right shows developing night time conditions....light blue line over 20 units indicate clearer conditions.

Night time conditions in the  last 24 hours

( green cloudy ,  light blue mainly clear , reading over 21.00 even clearer ! )

AC staff were asked to repair and upgrade parts of the Stonyhurst refractor located at the Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. After extensive dome repairs and interior decorating elements of the telescope needed to be improved to complete a working telescope.

With a 15" primary doublet this is a fine example of Victorian Astronomical engineering - comprising of mainly cast iron! Beautiful brass axis components needed some attention in terms of Declination clutch and RA drive and lock. Sympathetic use of brass metalwork to replace missing components have complemented the original drive systems. Unseen modern components were repaired or replaced which allowed the telescope to drive again in RA using the hand controller.

  The original  ?       Present  

 RA axis

At the DEC axis, re-tapping worm drive mount bolt holes.

   Fitting new DEC clutch assembly

RA drive lock handle  

       Adjusting the small finder scope

Not too bad for its age! (the lens that is ! )

   Peter and Andy - job done.

* A very good turn out for the event with visitors of all ages attending the AC. True to the weather forecast the sky conditions did not allow any observation  of the astronomical events predicted ( a very brief 10 seconds moon glow appeared through the clouds well after the lunar eclipse).Observations of Mars were certainly out of the question. We hope someone somewhere got a view?

For the rest of the evening visitors and members had informal discussions about general astronomy and future events at the AC.

Thanks to all for turning up inspite of the unhelpful weather. Maybe better luck at the 2018 Perseid Meteor shower in August... we plan to be open Saturday and Sunday evening/mornings.

The Astronomy Centre will be open to visitors on the night of the 27th July 2018 after 21.00.

The main feature should be the observation of the planet Mars which will be the brightest its been since Mars 2016. The approach will be only the second closest since the Stone age at about 35.7 million miles. In 2012 it was ~60 million miles from us at magnitude +1.2, on the 27th it will be -2.8 ( more than 40 times brighter). A very special event indeed.

As well as "Mars calling" we have some other events during the same night. At about 21.31 the moon will rise in eclipse ( the moon will be in the shadow of the earth), we should  see the second half of the event, cloud permitting.

Also throughout the night Venus, Saturn, Jupiter join the party , if we are lucky also Mercury just after sunset.

Join us for some planetary and lunar observing , the show starts at 21.30.