The Astronomy Show

 

Join me, Martin Lunn tonight and every Monday evening from 7.00 pm-9.00 pm on the Astronomy Show, I will take my weekly look at the night sky and look at all the latest news in astronomy. There will be the astronomical anniversaries this week plus the A-Z of Constellations and the Messier Marathon.

The Astronomy Show every Monday evening only on Drystone Radio 102 and 103.5 FM the show can be heard live on line at www.drystoneradio.com and the show can be heard later on the Drystone Radio Podcast.

The Astronomy Show

 

Join me, Martin Lunn tonight and every Monday evening from 7.00 pm-9.00 pm on the Astronomy Show, I will take my weekly look at the night sky and look at all the latest news in astronomy. There will be the astronomical anniversaries this week plus the A-Z of Constellations and the Messier Marathon.

The Astronomy Show every Monday evening only on Drystone Radio 102 and 103.5 FM the show can be heard live on line at www.drystoneradio.com and the show can be heard later on the Drystone Radio Podcast.

Will Hay, the White Spot on Saturn and Lamp posts

 The astronomer and comedian Will Hay who discovered the white spot on Saturn in 1933. The film star known for his playing of bumbling teachers or station masters, yet his work as an astronomer was unknown to most people, even his neighbours. 

 He discovered the white spot on Saturn using his 6 inch Thomas Cooke & Sons telescope. When he was interviewed by the press as well as outlying the astronomical work he undertook he also made reference to the problems of light pollution. He commented that :- 

He is delighted with his discovery for more than one reason. For some time he has been worrying Croydon council to shade the two lamp posts outside his house because their reflections interfere seriously with his work. He thinks that now perhaps they will realise that he is not just a funny man but someone of importance in the astronomical world.

The Winchcombe crater is not the first to be taken to a museum in England

 

The BBC reported that the part of the driveway where the Winchcombe meteorite landed is being preserved. This is not the first case of a crater being taken to a museum.

In Yorkshire on March 14^th 1881 a meteorite fell next to the North Eastern Railway line in Middlesbrough (Middlesbrough was in Yorkshire then) not only was the Middlesbrough meteorite ‘captured’.  The crater that the  meteorite made was also ‘captured’, a one yard cube of earth containing the crater was taken to the Yorkshire Museum .

Both meteorite and crater were displayed at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in York in 1881.

It is possible to to see the Middlesbrough meteorite at the Yorkshire Museum today. A cast of the crater still exists in the museum.

The Middlesbrough meteorite is one of the most important on Earth it is classed as a textbook example of an oriented meteorite. Only one side of the object was burned as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Astronomy Show

 

Join me, Martin Lunn tonight and every Monday evening from 7.00 pm-9.00 pm on the Astronomy Show, I will take my weekly look at the night sky and look at all the latest news in astronomy. There will be the astronomical anniversaries this week plus the A-Z of Constellations and the Messier Marathon.

The Astronomy Show every Monday evening only on Drystone Radio 102 and 103.5 FM the show can be heard live on line at www.drystoneradio.com and the show can be heard later on the Drystone Radio Podcast.

U Tau discovered in Manchester

 

Mr Baxendell of Manchester discovered on March 19^th 1862 a new variable star in the constellation of Taurus about 19 minutes of arc from the place of the nebula discovered by by Mr Hind in 1852. (This nebula was NGC 1555 associated with the variable star T Tauri).

 The star discovered by Mr Baxendell will be known as U Tauri

Early Photographs taken with Cookes

 

Some of the early astronomical photographs were taken in England by astronomers using Thomas Cooke & Sons telescopes.

In 1853 John Phillips in the Museum Gardens in York using a 6.25 inch telescope photographed the Moon. In 1857 Mr Fry used Mr Howell’s 6.5 inch telescope in Brighton.

At this period of time telescopes were designed for visual use and all the gentlemen astronomers had the problem while using refractors of the difference between the actinic and visual foci. Reflecting telescopes did not suffer from such problems.

The negatives obtained by both Phillips and Fry were about 1 inch in diameter.