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One of my slides included this image - from an 'astrology friendly' website that 'explained' the solstices Happily it raised a laugh from the lovely people And was then explained on a more scientific basis

As the chair of our Astro Society I was contacted by a local 'crystals and dreamcatcher' type shop as they were planning a Solstice Glamping weekend, and they wondered if we could 'bring some telescopes to do some stargazing'. Sadly I explained that with it being over the solstice, it wouldn't get properly dark at all, and no stars would be visible until almost midnight. However, I had given a talk to the Society on the Solstice and the Lunar Standstill, so offered to give a talk instead. I had to modify the talk for a general audience, but it's now one I might offer to other non specialist groups. With it still being light at 8pm, we had to move the screen under a Gazebo to be able to see the slides, but it seemed to go down well. I also gave a quick talk on how to get started in Astronomy, covering Binoculars, using a phone for nightscapes, and some good apps. A good time was had by all, and we managed to get away before the rain started.

A really fun target for binoculars is The Coathanger, also known as Brocchi's Cluster. About 1/3 of the way up from Altair to Vega in the Summer Triangle.

From your description of it coming with 'a motor' it sounds as though it currently has an equatorial mount. If the Scope has 'tube rings' and a dovetail wedge you will be able to use it with a simpler Alt-Az mount. If you buy something like the AZ-GTi, it will give you a very capable GOTO mount without having to buy a complete setup. As for eyepieces, I would suggest a 30 or 32mm eyepiece and a 21-7mm zoom. The 30/32mm will give you a low power (~20x) wide field view, which can be very helpful when finally getting on target - the zoom will give you a range of powers from ~30x to ~90x. I have heard of good things about BST for fixed power Eyepieces, and for the Zoom, I can say that the Svbony 7-21mm (~£50) is basic but competent (and very affordable) - you can easily spend 5x more for a better one, but I don't know if you'll find it 5x better.

If you're a motorhome user I can very highly recommend visiting a Star Party - you'll find details of upcoming ones on this site under the Star Parties and Astro Events forum. The one that I (and several others from here) go to is the Astrocamp star party, which is held at Cwmdu (near Crickhowell in South Wales) in the Spring and Autumn. The next one is at the end of September. We can't guarantee the weather, but the crowd is friendly, there should be lots of people with different levels of equipment and most people will be happy to talk about their kit, and give advice. Booking for September isn't open yet, but there's an Astrocamp Facebook group that will let you know when you can book - booking usually starts on a Saturday morning about 6 or 8 weeks before the date. Lovely campsite, great company, and talks and demonstrations during the day. Other Star Parties exist, there's one at Kelling Heath in Norfolk, and another in Galloway in Scotland. A new Star Party is being organised in Dorset for the first weekend in September, by a member of this forum. I've no doubt it'll be friendly too. Do you have an Astro Society near you? If you go to the https://gostargazing.co.uk/events-map/ webpage it'll let you know where and when nearby groups meet.

One neat feature of the Skywatcher systems that use Synscan (e.g. the AZ-Go2, Star Discovery, AZ-GTi, etc) is that they have Point and Track. This doesn't need alignment, so for those targets that you can find anyway (Moon, planets, brighter nebulae, those easy Star-hop targets), you simply find it in the selection list on the app, point the scope at it manually or using the motors, and then select 'Point and Track', it'll keep it in the field of view for ages without having to track it yourself. Great for early evening observing of the Moon and planets when you might not be able to pick out enough alignment stars. Paired with a wide field refractor it's a delight. But be warned that if you're using a longer focal length scope like a Maksutov, it can be harder to get the target in the eyepiece to start with.

A Julia Set is a set of points on a plane surface. If every point in the set is adjacent to another point in the set, so they form a single area on the surface, rather than having separate islands, it's said to be connected.

Very neat. As you may know, the Mandelbrot set is the map of all connected Julia Sets. Back when I started BASIC programming, I developed a MB generator, and then developed a secondary function to plot the Julia Set that corresponded to any particular point on the MB set. It was interesting to see how the overall shape of the JS depended on where the starting point was on the MB set. After a while you could tell where to start if you wanted JSs that had 2 main branches, or 3 branches, or 4 or more. Some interesting findings. If I was a born mathematician I'd probably have been able to make something of it - though more likely, I'd have found it was a well known thing in the field. Now I'm retired I must try to recreate the programme.

Two resources that might be useful: First is the GoStargazing website that has a map of dark sky locations reported by locals https://gostargazing.co.uk/location-map/ The other is the light pollution map https://www.lightpollutionmap.info However, at this time of year, and with your new location being further North than your usual spot, the sky won't get properly dark until the beginning of August. There will be astro societies to get to know though, and they'll be found under the Events pages of the Go Stargazing site.

If I've understood correctly, as a result of there now only being two reliable gyroscopes, NASA will implement a 1-gyro mode of operation that was first devised about 20 years ago. This will actively use one, and the other will be kept for spare, to be brought online if the currently used one has problems in the future. It's hoped that this might allow for up to another 20 years operation.

Who is this for? If me, read on... We had a good couple of school visits back in January, both very fortunate to have mostly clear skies for wow-ing the pupils and their parents. An interesting one coming up - a local crystals/reiki/woo and 'healing' shop is running a 'forest solstice retreat' and got in touch via our Club website to ask if someone could "come along with some telescopes for star-watching under the sky". I said we'd be happy to come along, but with it being the solstice weekend it wouldn't get dark at all - and with it being full moon weekend, it would be even less dark, but I would be happy to give a talk to the group. Back in January I had given a talk to our Astro Soc on the Solstice, the Lunar Standstill* and some neolithic sites that relate to them, so I'll give them a somewhat simplified version of that talk. It'll be fun at least. * I'd not heard of the Lunar Standstill until last September, when I heard a podcast on the neolithic alignments at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis, and how it seems to be aligned to the Major Lunar Standstill - the next one being next year. Ultimately it means that despite it being Full Moon when we're giving the talk, it'll be slo low that it won't clear the low hill to the south of the site we're giving the talk. Also likely to be doing some outreach when we're out staying near Astrofarm France in August or September.

I may have mentioned at one point that our opticians were doing their "two for one" deal, so - as well as the everyday varifocal pair, I got a single vision pair for astronomical use, and they live with the scope box. Used them occasionally, but the next year, after something of a 9 month gap (and after a revision of my prescription) I tried them again. No problems with them at the eyepiece, but when I then looked at theit was a different matter

Interesting that the Chinese have two relay satellites, Queqiao, and Queqiao-2. The original Queqiao was in a Halo orbit around the Earth/Moon L2 point which keeps it permanently on the far side of the Moon. However, that requires it to perform regular burns to keep stable in its orbit. So, for Chang'e 6, the Queqiao-2 relay satellite was sent into an extremely elliptical orbit (ultimately 200x16,000 km on each axis), that means it can spend about 2/3 of its orbit within range of the far-side surface at the South Pole. This orbit should be stable for at least a decade, without having running out of fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queqiao-2

A problem with one of the HST's last 3 gyroscopes was reported last Friday, causing it to go to safe mode. NASA has called a press conference for Tuesday 4th June - and it may be significant. https://www.space.com/hubble-telescope-press-conference-june-4 (9pm BST)

That's what I got on ebay for a bit cheaper. Given the current season, I've used the SS50 more in the daytime, which rules out platesolving - so being level shortens the process of 'hunting the sun'. If it asks you to 'make the two white dots' overlap, it's much easier to do using the level adjuster than trying to shorten or lengthen the tripod legs. Adjustment is basically: if the bubble isn't centred, adjust one knob until the bubble is exactly lined up with one of the other knobs. Then raise or lower the knob as required to centre the bubble. Can be done smoothly without causing wobble.

The 'planets lineup' is unlikely to be as good as the papers predict. Only Saturn and Mars are likely to be at all visible, and at this time of year, the ecliptic only has a very shallow angle in the morning, so the other planets will be lost in the morning twilight. There's an excellent resource for binocular users in the Binocularsky website (run by @BinocularSky on this forum). Until recently, he used to produce a monthly newsletter, but all the old ones are still available, so if you look at the ones for June and July they will still be relevant (except for Solar System targets of course). https://binocularsky.com/

A few mentions of issues with getting it level on this thread. Not sure if it's been mentioned previously, but I found a tripod leveller on eBay that make it much easier than trying to fiddle with the mini tripod A little more than £20 on eBay - very straightforward

From this ESA article https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid/Operations_begin_to_de-ice_Euclid_s_vision Basically, sublimation from the rest of Euclid followed by deposition onto the mirror surfaces.

I attached my phone to the laptop using a USB cable and copied the panorama file to This PC\<phone name>\Internal shared storage\Android\data\com.simulationcurriculum.skysafari6plus\files\Horizon Panoramas On Android 12 phone ETA clarify that this is SS6 plue

That's a shame, it must have been a one day only offer.

The new Chris Lintott book is currently on offer for 99p on Kindle If you're a Google Books user, keep an eye out, it may drop its price there too.

The Dog Stars podcast by Chris Lintott is (mostly) about the joys of observing, so may be something you'd enjoy. Short episodes of Chris and his dog (Mr Max) on what they see out at night. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dog-stars

Kevin Quinn's book A Decade in Stargazing is a lovely personal account of his stargazing. Well worth reading.

Sadly we're away, otherwise it would be definitely a draw. Hope it goes well, Kevin. See you at Astrocamp later in the month perhaps.

Here's mine, from North Cheshire, so not very far from Liverpool. The most obvious star that's at about 8 o'clock from the auroral corona, is Arcturus. Sony A5000, F/3.5 - 5s exposure at 320 ISO. Clearly, over enhanced, but it brings out the detail.