Our dedicated team of astronomers is continuing to use the Faulkes telescope in Hawaii most Wednesdays when we meet, and we’ll soon be using the Faulkes observatory in Australia too, so we can get to see and image some of the objects in the Southern Sky, never visible here in the Northern Hemisphere. We are also doing a free online course ‘Astronomy With An Online Telescope’ as part of the Club sessions, which will provide access to the OU observatory in Tenerife.
We hope you enjoy the images below! And also please remember this is very much a work in progress… The learning curve is steep, but a lot of fun!
In other news, we are excited to have been awarded a grant of £600 from the Institute of Physics in order to purchase a GOTO telescope and imaging system for the Club and Science Department. Over the next month or so, we will be putting that together as we acquire all the components. Another project we’re looking at is designing and building a radio telescope – that will open up a whole lot of objects and ‘space stuff’ that are otherwise invisible to us, with the added massive advantage (especially in the UK) that you need neither night time nor clear skies to do radio astronomy!
Members (and your families and friends) please stay tuned for news of our first STAR PARTY. This will allow us to meet to do some ‘in person’ observing after sunset under the lovely Bortle 4 (1=darkest, 9=most light polluted) skies the Island has to offer. Possible locations are: the field next to the Vectis Astronomical Society’s observatory; sites in West Wight, for example Chale recreation ground, Whale Chine, the top part of Tennyson Down, the Jubilee car park near Brighstone. Students will be asked to come along accompanied by a responsible adult, as part of good safeguarding practice, although if this won’t be possible for any individual students, they are requested to discuss that with one of us (myself Mr Gray, Mrs Rowe, Mr Palmer or Dr Clarkson) so we can make sure they don’t miss out. Full details are to follow.
Finally, please also look out for weekly weather reports by our student meteorologists, using data and forecast models from our own weather station on the roof of Medina College. These will be published on our social media sites as well as the main IWEF website.
New members are welcome to join the club which meets every Wednesday, 3.10 – 4.30 pm in S1. You must have a signed consent form though which can be obtained from Mr Gray in Music or Mrs Rowe in Science.
