For a few days around Sunday 26th May, a close three-way conjunction of planets Jupiter, Venus and Mercury will be visible in the NW sky for a while shortly after sunset. Venus will be the brightest, followed by Jupiter, but on 26th Mercury will be the highest above the horizon of the three, so if you're part of the estimated 99% of the population who have never seen Mercury, now is possibly the best chance you will get! The three planets will all be within 2 degrees, or four moon diameters of each other and will remain close in the evenings before and after 26th.

As we move into June, Jupiter will sink below the horizon but Venus and Mercury will carry on rising together to be joined by the Crescent Moon on 9th and 10th Mercury reaches it greatest altitude on 8th and 9th then moves back towards the Sun.

The usual safety consideration applies – do not start to look for these planets until the Sun is very definitely below the horizon! 

Wednesday 17th April marks the date of the 39th Annual General Meeting of the Association. The purposes of the meeting are to review the activities of the past year, elect a new Council for the coming year and for the Council to receive feedback from the membership on how they – that’s you – would like to see the Association develop.

We have also had a sub-committee sitting to decide whether or not the prestigious Aidan P Fitzgerald Award should be awarded this year, and if so, who the recipient should be. This award is given no more than once a year for “Outstanding Service to the Association” and is named after one of the leading members of the Association in the 1940s and 50s.

Once the main business is over we will provide some entertainment in the form of a short talk by Terry Moseley, our PR Officer and 9 years Past President ac repair temecula in nerby. In the season in which we sadly lost Sir Patrick Moore, surely the best ambassador anybody could have had, Terry, who knew Sir Patrick personally during his time at Armagh, will share some anecdotes from that time.

The evening will finish with a Bring and Buy sale, so if you have any pieces of gear you don’t use any more that could be useful to someone else, bring them along and see if a deal can be done!

The Pan-STARRS1 telescope is the largest telescope currently used to systematically survey the sky for comets and asteroids. Since starting in 2010, it has been used to make over 4 million detections of comets, asteroid and other Solar system bodies. This cornucopia of data is allowing us to study many different regions from Near-Earth space to the Kuiper Belt. In this talk Professor Alan Fitzsimmons will describe how Pan-STARRS1 works, how asteroids and comets are found, and what we have discovered so far.

Admission is free, including light refreshments, and all are welcome.

Andor Technologies is a Belfast based company manufacturing a ranges of cameras including some which are capable of high-end astrophotography. The company grew out of the Physics Department of Queens University Belfast and now supplies cameras to the world market. Some of the topics covered by the lecture will include:-

·         Lucky Imaging

·         Hunting for Extra Solar Planets using various techniques

·         Andor’s involvement in the development of the Curiosity (Mars) Rover

·         The Sofia Flying Telescope (it’s a 14 tonne telescope in a Boeing 747)

·         Adaptive Optics

·         Tracking space junk, mapping the Kuiper belt and tracking comets.

·         And a few other things

This will not be done in huge depth and will not assume a great level of knowledge on the part of the audience. This promises to be a most interesting and involving talk, particularly for those interested in photographing the Cosmos!

Admission is free billigaste mobil abonne mang barn, including light refreshments, and all are welcome.

Comet C/2011 L4 Pan-Starrs is now visible in the Northern Hemisphere! Seeing this new comet is a very tricky observation though it should become easier during the week. Although the Comet is quite bright – current estimates put it as mag 2 or maybe even a bit brighter, it is close to the Sun so is only visible for a short time after sunset. The map above shows where to look, but more important is the choice of viewing location – a good western horizon is essential. Start looking after sunset, probably 30 mins after the actual sunset time. On 12th and 13th March the comet will be close to the crescent Moon making location easier. Because of the twilight it may be difficult to see naked eye, but binoculars will make it a lot easier.

Geert Barentsen from Armagh Observatory has produced an excellent article on finding the Comet on his website here…

The animation on this page gives an indication of the time to be looking on a day by day basis you could check here. Note that it becomes a morning object later in the month, though it will have faded considerably by then!

Prof Alan Fitzsimmons of QUB has created charts designed specifically for Belfast. This one shows the altitude/azimuth of the comet at 7:00pm from Belfast. The second shows its position (ra and dec) relative to the stars over the same time interval. This also shows the horizon on the first date plotted, but it does not show the correct altitude/azimuth for the comet after that date. Many thanks are due to Prof Fitzsimmons for these charts!

Members and friends photographs of the Comet are shown in the Gallery here…

Good luck!

The next Irish Astronomical Association public lecture will be given by Dr Chris Watson of Queens University, Belfast. 

The Irish Astronomical Association will be holding another of their very popular astronomy evenings at the Museum beside Bangor Castle, on Saturday evening, 16 February, at 6.30 p.m. Once again we'll have a selection of powerful telescopes and binoculars for viewing the night sky, an exhibition, short astronomy and space films, a selection of meteorites (rocks from space) which you can actually hold, and of course the Stardome mobile planetarium just in case of bad weather. And you'll have a chance to meet our own 'Ulsternaut', Derek Heatly from Groomsport, who is booked to fly into space with Virgin Galactic.