More Success at Trysull

16th January 2024 By Richard Our observing/social event on Tuesday January 16th was the first time we’d used Trysull Village Hall since winter 2021. The event was a resounding success, and … Read more

Wolvas visit to The Herschel Museum, Bath – 19th Nov 2022

by Cath Adams

On 19 November 2022 19 members of the society visited the Herschel Museum in Bath.

The weather was sunny and travelling separately we had arranged to meet at the museum at 2pm, which was closed to the public at that time for us, so that we could have a private tour conducted by two members of staff, Charlotte and Les.  Also on hand was Simon Holbeche of Bath Astronomers who knew the museum very well and not only shared information and stories about William Herschel and his telescopes, but answered all our questions.  We had a good old look round and were permitted to take photographs but not touch the exhibits.

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Partial Solar Eclipse Event – 25 October 2022

By Doug Bickley

Collage of group shots at the observatory

Whilst astronomers aren’t afraid of the dark it’s lovely sometimes to get together during the day for an event and a chinwag with other members. This partial eclipse, even though the obscuration was only about 15%, seemed a good opportunity, so we arranged a meeting at our observatory. This was combined with induction training and reminders for the observatory pod plus a bit of ground clearance.

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Recent Club Activities

Halfpennt Green event

By Richard Harvey

Alongside our internet lectures and Zoom meetings, the society has arranged several observations sessions and outreach events in the past few months. Here’s a quick overview of what’s been going on ‘off-line’ recently.

On 12th August we met once again at Halfpenny Green Vineyard for a meteor watch, on the evening of the peak of the Perseids. This was a most successful event, with quite a crowd turning up. We were blessed with clear skies for once, and over sixty Perseid meteors were seen over three hours. Some were bright fireballs with smoke trails, and one showed a bright green hue. This was a real fun event, as many people got excited as they spotted Perseids streaking across the sky, it was like a cosmic piece of theatre! Using the BAA meteor observing forms I tried to keep track of them all, and some of us also managed to do some deep-sky and planetary observing as well. Quite a few members tried to capture an image, and Doug’s photo shows a Perseid in Aquarius, above Jupiter (there’s an un-cropped version of Doug’s photo on the society’s Flickr page).

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Partial Eclipse Event – June 10th 2021

Group shot (Richard Harvey)

By Richard Harvey

With the relaxation of Covid guidelines for outside gatherings for June 2021, we were pleased to be able to safely arrange an outside observation session for the partial solar eclipse which occurred on Thursday 10th June. We once again met at Halfpenny Green Vineyard, and even with a 100% cloud cover forecast, around fourteen members turned up, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Moon’s silhouette obscure part of the Sun. This would be the first partial eclipse viewable from the West Midlands since 2015.

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