Sky Notes - June 2019

In this month's edition:

  • Planetary Skylights: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn
  • Meteors: Ophiuchids, June Lyrids
  • Summer Solstice
  • Noctilucent Cloud
  • June 2019 Sky Charts

After skies cleared quite late for our scheduled star party on the May11th, (and having not erected any placards as a result), we decided to utilise the conditions by trying out the LX 200 and power pack for a pre-season shakedown run.  

Keith, John, Phil and Elaine all came up to the college where we hoped to have a good shakedown test of the Meade scope.  Initially, things did not look promising, problems with the power station/power cable, locking/motor synch mechanism and hand controller, gave some cause for concern.... [Read more about Society News: Recent and Coming Events.]

Observatory News

Not a great deal to tell, the college has the estimate of the work involved, the methods of how this will be tackled has been somewhat amended since the last update.  [Read more about Observatory News]

Next month sees the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, which I shall be covering in greater detail in July’s notes, but for this month I thought perhaps to take a look at The Moon from an observing standpoint, especially as June ‘nights’ are so short... [Read more about Our Neighbour in Space: The Moon]