Archive for November, 2009
December Meeting Reminder
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
Sunday 29th November 2009
Don’t forget that the December meeting is this coming Wednseday (December 2nd) and will be a ‘Night Sky’ meeting.
Lee Sproats from Green-Witch in Dry Drayton will be bringing along some of their latest equipment for us to try out, and Ed Zanders will be showing us how to collimate a Newtonian scope using the Club’s laser collimating tool. If we have clear skies, this will all be tied in with an observing session!
Meetings Archive
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Thursday 19th November 2009
Details of every one of the Club meetings, since its inception in 1994 up to the present, are now logged in the Meetings Archive.
Enjoy!
Leonids and site restructuring
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Tuesday 17th November 2009
With the Leonids Meteor shower nearing its peak, I decided it was about time to re-organise the web site a little. We now have all the meeting reports on the Meetings page, rather than here on the News page, which will make it much easier to add reports from the archives.
Look out for the Leonids tonight – clearish skies at 20:30 tonight, and the peak expected to last until 23:00
Club History
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
Sunday 15th November 2009
Yesterday I spent an hour with Gordon wading through the Club’s archives – three files full of newsletters, press clippings, photos and other paraphernalia that Gordon has collected over the last 15 years!
Over the next few months I’m hoping to put as much of this information on the web site as I can, and to get the ball rolling I’ve made a page describing the Club’s History.
Dave Eagle – “Charles Piazzi Smyth”
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Wednesday 4th November 2009
This month’s meeting was an interesting history of the nineteenth century observer Charles Piazzi Smyth. This talk was given by Dave Eagle, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and an old friend of the Papworth Club.
Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900), was the son of the renowned English amateur astronomer, Admiral William Henry Smyth. Charles got his middle name from a family friend Giuseppe Piazzi, the famous Italian astronomer who discovered the first asteroid Ceres in 1801.
Smyth was Astronomer Royal of Scotland and in 1856, he undertook his famous scientific voyage to the mountain peaks of Tenerife – on his honeymoon! Here he pioneered the modern practice of siting telescopes at high altitudes for better observing conditions. He also made an estimate of the amount of heat radiation received from the Moon, and thus pioneered infra-red astronomy. Dave illustrated his talk with pictures from his own visit to Tenerife where he visited the ruins of Smyth’s observatories on the mountains (pictured above).
Unfortunately Smyth had a major obsession with the pseudo-science of pyramidology, which is founded in the belief that the measurements of the Great Pyramid contain a mystical significance. Indeed he was the only person ever to have resigned his fellowship of the Royal Society, following their refusal to publish his pyramid papers. He apparently offered his resignation in the hope that it would be refused, but the members called his bluff and he lost his fellowship!
Dave concluded the talk by showing some of his own astronomical images that he had taken on the mountains after dark. The show was accompanied by some Pink Floyd, which is appropriate for a Cambridgeshire venue. He promised to give us more on his imaging at a later date, so keep an eye out for future programmes.
November Meeting Reminder
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Tuesday 3rd November 2009
Don’t forget that our November meeting is tomorrow night, Wednesday 4th November, when Dave Eagle from Bedford Astronomical Society will give a presentation on Charles Piazzi Smyth‘s observatory.
As usual the meeting will be held at 7.30pm in the Vinter Room, Vinter Close, Papworth Everard. Check out the Meetings page for a map.