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Comet
Lincolnshire Astronomy

  • Famous Lincolnshire People listed on this website have made a profound contribution to
    astronomy, exploration, scientific and mathematical understanding and thinking.
  • Cleethorpes Astronomical Society
  • Lincoln Astronomical Society
  • The Cosmic Elk
  • StarLincs is Lincolnshire's Mobile Planetarium.
    For booking details contact: starlincs@tiscali.co.uk
  • Paul Money's Astrospace website gives useful information and links to local societies and national astronomy sites.
  • Paul Money received a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2012 Sir Arthur Clarke awards.

    The annual Horncastle Astronomy Weekend
    takes place each September. A very good event.
    2013 dates: 13-15 September. 41st HAW!

    Run by Paul Money in association with
    the British Astronomical Association and
    Horncastle College.
    For further information, contact Paul Money
    via his website Astrospace.

    Paul Money's Gibraltar Starnights
    Watch his "Events" page for updates on all future Starnights.
    You can also order his invaluable publication, "Night Scenes."
    For further information, contact Paul Money
    via his website Astrospace.

    For on-line newsletters on what to look out for in the night sky each month.

  • Sky & Telescope
  • Jodrell Bank Events page
  • Sky at Night Newsletter
  • Solar Terrestrial Dispatch for alerts of Solar Flares and related phenomena.

     
    The Sun, Moon, our Comets and Planets

  • BBC On-line Solar System Click on the sun, the planets or the minor objects to explore them for yourself.

    The Sun
    Sites to check regularly are:

  • Current Solar Images on NOAA website
  • SOHO
  • NASA Solar Data Analysis Center
  • UK AuroraWatch
  • Solar Terrestrial Dispatch
  • Hourly STD DMSP/POLAR Auroral Activity

    and The Moon

  • Virtual Reality Moon Phase Pictures created from ray-traced images of the Moon.
    You can view the phase of the Moon for any date and time [1800-2199 A.D].

     
    Meteors, Comets &c.

    Meteor showers are somewhat unpredictable, so it is a good idea to look out for meteors before and after the predicted peaks.
    You might catch an unexpected display.

    Useful Meteor Shower pages and related information.

  • Meteor Showers Online by Gary Kronk. Excellent Meteor resource.
  • International Meteor Organisation for more scientific presentation of Meteor information. Very good.
    Details of major showers are posted on this site, which is packed with well presented facts, figures and diagrams!
  • Comets in 2013, Peter Grego's article in Astronomy Now. Sounds promising.

     
    Eclipses

    For accurate timing data for Lincolnshire see Paul Money's Night Scenes (Astrospace Publications).

  • NASA's Eclipse Home Page with details of coming eclipses, transits and their visibility.
    Next Transit of Mercury: 09 May 2016; Next Transits of Venus: 2117 and 2125.
  • Mr Eclipse. Fred Espenak's Website.

     
    Light Pollution

    Prefer dark skies? Worried about the impact of light pollution on wildlife?
    If you are fed up with tacky, sentimental, energy-wasting and potentially
    harmful lighting of buildings, radio masts and monuments and at holiday
    resorts, ports &c. check out:

  • Humber Bridge lighting trials Andrew Credland's photograph of the 1999 [now-scrapped]
    project says it all! But the lighting idea still has support in some quarters! Beware.
  • The BAA's Campaign for Dark Skies
  • Towerkill
  • The Fatal Light Awareness Program

     
    "SpaceLinks"

  • Jodrell Bank Observatory – Home of the Lovell Telescope. Lots of useful information and links.
  • National Schools Observatory – La Palma robotic telescope.
  • BBC – The Sky At Night – with Patrick Moore.

  • National Space Centre – Leicester.
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day. Each day a different image or photograph of the universe is featured,
    along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
  • Time Conversion Chart UTC/GMT, EST, EDT &c.
  • Wallace Sargent's Homepages Exiled Winterton Astronomer and Astrophysicist. Many good links.

  • Heavens-Above – Chris Peat's excellent website runs dynamic web pages which generate visibility
    predictions for satellites and Iridium flares and a wide range of related astronomical information for
    any location on the Earth. Useful comet visibility data for observers.
  • History of Astronomy [and Science] website by Wolfgang R. Dick. Useful library of links.
  • Bad Astronomy An "antidote" site by Phil Plait.
  • Birr Castle, home of the Parsons family, the Earls of Rosse, who made a significant contribution to astronomy.

     
    "SETI"

    The Search for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is on!
    There's little enough intelligence here on Earth, so we could do with it!

  • Jodrell Bank and the SETI project. The Lovell 76m radiotelescope at Jodrell Bank and the
    305m Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico have begun to conduct the most sensitive and
    comprehensive search ever undertaken for radio communication signals from
    Extra-Terrestrial Civilisations beyond our Solar System.

  • SETI@home. A scientific experiment that harnesses the power of hundreds of thousands of
    Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
    You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyses radio telescope data.
    Sign up on the BOINC website.
    Free software can be downloaded there and you can "attach" to any of the BOINC projects using this.

  • UK branch of the SETI League aims to provide information which is of specific interest to members of the
    SETI league in the UK, or to non-members who are interested in the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.


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    Roger Parsons
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