Broadcast this morning on 'In Our Time', listen to here or repeated Radio 4 Sunday night.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001yqp3 ..read more

Bit of a head scratcher. The other night the forecast on Clear Outside looked fairly depressing but when I looked at the cloud amounts, they were really confusing. At 8 o'clock with just 25% low cloud and 2% medium cloud it predicted that 93% of the sky would be obscured. An even more impenetrable prediction was for 10 o'clock where 1% low cloud, 2% medium and 4% upper cloud was apparently going to give 79% cover. Does anyone know how CO arrives at these figures? Clearly straightforwards addition (which might well not work anyway) isn't involved. The sky, in the event, stayed clear enough ..read more

Probably the best example of a fragmenting fireball I've ever come across. Not sure this isn't an artificial reentry rather than a natural meteor. Also not sure there aren't two different events going on in the footage, with the second lot of footage seeming significantly slower (more like a reentry) than the first ..read more

My daughter’s 14 and strong in science & maths —> she’s doing triple separate science, maths & further maths GCSE. Her school don’t teach GCSE Astronomy, she’s wondering if it’s something we could self teach at home? (Hopefully with agreement of the school). She can already independently use an 8 inch dobsonian and can polar align my HEQ5 mount and set up my refractors. She knows the names of the surface features on moon, can find (and name) the constellations and can find deep sky objects without adult help or GOTO assistance.  I’m an Emergency Medicine Doctor, did maths and p ..read more

Documentaary starting on BBC2 about the JWST now ..read more

I always enjoy listening to these programmes with Jim Al-Khalili. This weeks broadcast was from the RAS in London, with Mike Edmonds from Cardiff University - very entertaining!  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001yhzp ..read more

Recently had these with a vixen telescope and mount so I assume they are vixen filters, but I don’t know what type, are they LP filters? chaz ..read more

Hi all,  I'm new to the forum - so first of all, hello all! I wanted to know where users usually buy and sell secondhand items (apart from this forum), and what precautions do users take when buying astro gear secondhand?  Do you usually meet up in person to inspect the gear being sold? Or are things more commonly bought online and then shipped? What steps do people take to protect themselves when buying and selling, apart from using PayPal's Buyer Protection?  I'm interested in both the buyer and the seller's point of view.      ..read more

A few months ago I had the slightly unhinged idea to create hyperlapses (moving timelapses) of the northern lights and night sky from a drone.  I wanted to capture the majesty of the aurora above grand landscapes with sweeping parallax movements contributing to the sense of scale.  Scanning the usual places on the internet, I'd not come across any examples of this sort of photography, which surprised me a little, and then excited me.  It never really occurred to me there might have been good reasons why no-one had tried it! When we were last in the north of Norway in February, f ..read more

Has anyone ordered items from this company and their experiences re delivery and any unexpected import duties? Would appreciate any input please. Cheers, Ewan ..read more