Nothing
yet.
Venus first, low and west, and then a long forty minutes where the sky insists it is still blue. This is when the domes come off, the mirrors come down to air temperature, and the warden decides what the night is actually going to be. Bring a coat you think is too warm.
No white light past the gate from this point. Red torches at the hut, free, yours to keep.
Local sidereal time
00:00:00
Site meridian 04h 44m. The dome's setting circles read from this, not from your watch.
Next on the programme
- Saturn clears the ridge
- --h --m --s
- Moonset, sky goes properly black
- --h --m --s
Lunar dial
Waxing crescent
0% illuminated
Under 30% we open the 610mm. Over it, we point low and go planetary.
Slit open.
Four instruments. You will look through at least two of them.
610 mm
Ritchey-Chrétien, f/8
Alt-az fork, direct-drive. The one you queue for.
355 mm
Newtonian, f/4.5
On the east pier. Wide, fast, forgiving of a beginner’s eye.
127 mm
Apochromat, f/7
Rolled out to the lawn. Doubles, the moon, and Saturn at 180x.
Ha 90 mm
Solar, double-stacked
Daytime only. Prominences at 0.5 angstrom.
Everything
crosses
the line.
A body is highest, steadiest and least smeared by air the moment it crosses your meridian. The whole programme is built backwards from those times — which is why we run late, and why the best half hour of a public night is usually the last one.
| Body | Transit | Alt | Mag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venus | 19:12 | 11° | −4.1 |
| Saturn | 23:34 | 34° | +0.7 |
| Jupiter | 01:06 | 58° | −2.4 |
| Mars | 03:41 | 41° | +1.1 |
| Uranus | 02:19 | 52° | +5.7 |
Faint
things.
Lyra
Small, obvious, and it holds M57 between the bottom two.
Cassiopeia
The W. Point one stroke past it and you are in the Double Cluster.
Cygnus
Flying down the Milky Way. Albireo is the beak.
Logged this night, in order taken
| Object | Class | In | Mag | Note from the eyepiece |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M13 | Globular cluster | Hercules | 5.8 | Resolves to grain at 210x on the 610. |
| M57 | Planetary nebula | Lyra | 8.8 | The ring holds its hole even at low power. |
| NGC 869/884 | Double cluster | Perseus | 4.3 | Best in the 355 — needs the field, not the aperture. |
| M31 | Spiral galaxy | Andromeda | 3.4 | Two dust lanes on a moonless night. Naked-eye from the lawn. |
| Albireo | Double star | Cygnus | 3.1 | Gold and blue. The one nobody expects to like most. |
| M27 | Planetary nebula | Vulpecula | 7.4 | Apple-core shape with an O-III filter in. |
Four
people
awake.
- Night warden
- Runs the programme, decides what the sky will actually allow, and calls the close.
- Dome operator
- Drives the 610 and the slit. Does the pointing so you do the looking.
- Naked-eye guide
- On the lawn with a red torch and a green pointer. Where the constellations get learned.
- Imaging desk
- For anyone who brought a camera. Polar alignment, guiding, and a 20-minute stack to take home.
Take
a night.
Slots are capped by how many people can stand in a dome without shaking it.
Public night
Fri + Sat, 20:30
90 min
2 instruments
£14
Deep-sky session
New-moon week, 22:00
4 hrs
The 610, plus the lawn
£38
Imaging bench
By arrangement
To dawn
Pier + power + guiding
£55
School / group
Weekday evenings
2 hrs
Whole site, 30 max
From £210
Cloud policy: if the warden closes the night before it starts, your slot moves, it does not vanish. We do not sell a sky we cannot show you.
Appended to every sheet since 1998
Dark is a thing you can lose in one bad planning decision and not get back in a lifetime.
Every fixture on this site points down, is under 2700 K, and is off by 22:00. We publish the sky-quality reading at the top of each sheet because a number is harder to argue with than a feeling. It has moved 0.31 magnitudes the wrong way in eleven years.