Sky Notes - April 2017

In this month's edition:

  • Planetary Skylights: Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
  • Meteor Showers: Lyrids, Virginids and alpha Scorpiids
  • Comet: 41P Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák
  • April 2017 Sky Charts

Edwin HubbleIt all started in 1924, when Edwin Hubble proved galaxies are very distant objects, each containing millions or billions of stars, bound together by gravity.  Within a few years, he set up a system to classify these galaxies by shape; a system which is still pretty much the system we use today... [Read more about Classification of Galaxies]

Eskdale School Night

I don’t believe it!  The Eskdale ‘Star night’ (Wednesday 22nd) unfortunately coincided with the only bad weather night of the week so our planned outdoor observations were quite out of the question.  No scopes then, but with a new looking inflatable planetarium brought over and manned by York University boffins, who needed clear skies.  All we needed was somewhere to use for the scale solar sytem(s).  An ideal location was at hand – the main school corridor, which at nearly 60 mtrs long was tailormade for our demo... [Read more about Eskdale School Night]

Just to reminder that we shall be hosting a star party event for visiting pupils from Ayresome Primary School & Lego Innovation Studio up at the Whitby Youth Hostel on April 12thElizabeth Labelle; assistant Head Teacher was impressed with the pupil response and feedback after last year’s inaugural event, and has contacted the society with regards to host another one this year.  The start time is around 20:30h at the WHA on the east cliff. [Read more about Event Horizon – future Star party events]