AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh. Yep, the only evening required clear – or even partly clear; July 27th, turned out apocalyptic. Mark did venture up to the West Cliff for 20:45h, sat in the car, headlights on, peering through hell unleashed, along with a few other hardy and optimistic souls.
To paint the scene, you couldn’t even be creative and photograph the lightning strikes, because the rain was so heavy, which to add insult to injury grew even heavier around the time of the eclipse moonrise. Balrogs and demons, definitely the work of a wizard bent on ruining our chances of observing... [Read more about Lunar Eclipse, Mars opposition (27-Aug-2018)]
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Well, the fireworks were quite good, but too early and it wasn’t dark enough. The cloud rolled in off the sea, so we hardly saw anything, but the evening was enjoyable and we may have gained some new members. 
This was our second Park Fest event, a family fun day organised by North York Moors – Parks authority and held at the Danby Moors centre.
With the continuing good weather we have hosted a number of unscheduled star parties – and probably could have done more – but even Mark needs a break sometimes. Ironically the scheduled event on the 21st was almost called off with cloud cover during the day forecast to persist well into the night. It didn’t... well not enough to hamper our observations... 
Observers join WDAS Members for the one star party scheduled in 'the lightest month'. And the fog in which had marked the early part of the month had given way to clear skies and warm temperatures.
The society has again been invited to the NYM Park Fest day on Sunday 22nd July, to be held at the Danby Moors centre.
The summer star party season is now upon us, and with the good weather mostly holding several events have already been held on the cliff. The first was an unscheduled event for the May bank holiday Sunday, and proved quite successful. Warm temperatures and clear skies made it a pleasurable evening with Venus and Jupiter being the chief targets... 
After a three year break Paul returned to Whitby to give the presentation he was due to give last year, but had to pull out due to family illness. For once his trip was less susceptible to the worst of the weather, yet despite being a settled warm weather period, Mother Nature still tried to rain on our parade, but i think we got away with it.
It’s been a pretty frustrating winter and early spring with regard to Sunday evening observatory sessions, averaging out at just over one a month... "poor". Still, we have managed to get up in the last few weeks... 
