We had a highly successful "members only" solar viewing event last night at the ROG. Around 20 Flamsteed members and guests turned up for a most enjoyable evening. Thanks to Nick Phillips for all the work he has done in setting up these events.
I've written a brief report of the event, which is now on this website:
http://flamsteed.info/2014/07/members-solar-observing-at-the-royal-observatory-greenwich/
A few photos from the event:
Originals are here.
Great to see pics of some of the people who took part. Do you have any images of what they saw? This pic (and I hope the link works) of mine is not exactly a candidate for the APOTY2015 but it was pleasing nonetheless. Celestron130 and a BlackBerry combined with damn-all happening on the Sun doesn't make for a great photograph - but what strikes me about this is how the Sun really looks 3D - spherical - and not like a disc.
Sun pic.
Of course, compared to Tej's stuff, mine looks like a pool table cue ball...
*sigh* Okay, I can't get the flipping link to my Twitter upload to work and I'm running out of battery lif
Hi Andy, I can't work out how to embed your Twitter photo into the forum, but I'll investigate later today. A link to the tweet is here: https://twitter.com/Gaelaxydotcom/status/492727882506964992/photo/1
I did attempt to take an iPhone image of the Sun on Tuesday evening, but it was pretty rubbish, so I'm not sharing it. It's very difficult to do, as there is a tendency to overexpose the brighter areas... it's really best achieved using a DSLR, webcam or (best of all) a high-frame rate CCD.
Anyway, off to the ROG in a moment for today's viewing session... looks like it might cloud over later, but we should get a couple of hours in.
Unfortunately, our members solar viewing session planned for this evening has been cancelled.
With these events, we have to give the museum 24 hours notice of any "go/no-go" decision, so that we have sufficient museum staff available to cover the session.
The forecast for today looks decidedly mixed, with frequent rain showers and heavy cloud cover. However, it is forecast to brighten up later, but it looks unlikely that we will have clear skies. On that basis, we didn't really have any other choice than to cancel. No doubt we will now have a beautiful summer's evening as a result of our decision, so get the barbecue out 😉
There is one final members only session planned for next week - Tuesday 12 August. Otherwise, we still have several public viewing sessions during the month of August.