AstroPioneer

Here are some of the astronomical and stargazing highlights for April to June 2024. This covers both large and small night sky events that is possible to calculate in advance!

I am planning to travel to Northern Iceland this year in late October, early November to see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Little did I know that I would be capturing Aurora in London! I got the notification two hours before they were due to arrive, and unlike something like the IIS you can't really plan for it, but luckily I have a go bag for astronomical emergencies. I quickly decided I wanted to capture the whole thing on camera determined to create a complete video of the event. The Aurora itself was powerful with reds being seen as high as the celestial pole and a full array of colors from the common reds and less common greens to even a hint of blue, being able to see all of the colors so far down must have meant there was a powerful solar storm going on in space. The event lasted about two hours in total on the night of the 10th of May 2024, and really got started when white streaks suddenly seemed to shoot along the sky from the horizon towards the celestial pol...

On a pleasant late April evening I went to see Chris Lintott at the Queen's House Greenwich as part of the Flamsteed Astronomical Society. There Chris was doing a talk focused around his new book Our Accidental Universe. So I thought I would leave a quick review of both the talk and the book.

There seems to be some exciting news about the upcoming Andromedids Meteor Outburst due for December 5th between 9 to 12 p.m UTC.

A few nights ago, I witnessed a train of Starlink satellites moving across the sky. I was quick to grab my camera and record them, but unfortunately, the footage turned out shaky due to the lack of a tripod. This experience motivated me to capture them again, but this time with better equipment. I find that the starlink sattelite trains, while many do complain about them are the most spectacular satellites found in the night sky.

I was in the South Downs, a dark sky site, looking at the night sky and I thought it was a great opportunity to explain how easy it is to find Polaris.