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and increasing wildfires!

I think my oldest is a first edition of Webb's Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes from 1859

of course all these names are utterly meangless and are just run by charlatans to get money from gullible people.

I think the number of vendors there was about normal. It was just a very big hall so it may have looked smaller. There were obvioulsy some vendors that were not there that would appear at IAS such as Rother Valley and FLO but then they have not been there in previous years either.

I would wait until later in the year when the Milky Way is to the south as there is less light pollution that way however Saggittarius is always low so that may be a challenge. What kind of camera were you thinking of using?

The main National Trust car park would have the east view blocked by trees. You would be more impacted by the light polllution from Wantage and DIdcot which is pretty bad. The disabled car aprk would be better but it would dpend on what you were trying to do.

possibly one of the worst Kelling's on record for visual observers with the mositure and light pollution. The imagers seem to have had a good time though and comet 12P was awasome.

update so far, misty and very damp. Clear slot for tonight has disappeared. Not seen the ground this wet before

The way the weather is going you may need a houseboat Keith

and never will be. It is a historic document now much like Webb's Celestial Objects for Common telescopes. It is unclear now whether there ever will be a 2050 co-ordinate system.

well as each volume is self contained and does not rely on future ones make the most of them while they are out.

The Webb Soc do import some copies and we are awaiting our next order. AAS/Shop at Sky are very difficult to work with but we hope to have some Annals 10 by PAS. They are a very difficult sell as people think they are too technical and most imagers aren't inot astronomy.

Just to avoid any incorrect information from the Breckland site there will be two star parties at the Haw Wood Caravan site https://www.hawwoodfarm.co.uk/ next year.

The dates are 5-10 April 2024 and 3-10 Nov 2024. Booking is through the site

but expensive for vendors and given the very poor turnout last year for the show I imagine many will be deciding on this one.

does the Dob Mob still exists in any form?

nope and the forecast is getting worse

Also Norwich are no longer involved in running the spring star party at Kelling. That has been handed off to Kelling itself as there was no interest in runing it from Norwich AS.

I would suggest posting it on UKastrobuysell http://ukastrobuysell.com . This looks like an older model without any of the fancy drives so may not ftech much more than £600

Unfortunately now we are being messed around by Kelling management and the dates are being moved to times when we are unlikely to get much in the way of clear skies due to the fact that they want to fit in other events. I suspect the long term future of Kelling may be uncertain.

However most UK star parties suffer the same issues with skies.

not sure with an almost full moon if this weekend will be that good for astronomy.

actually Haw Wood normally do two star parties a year, one int he Spring and one in the autumn, although with Kelling messing thing s around I am not sure they will have a Spring one next year.  Not all their grass picthes have electric and I am not sure they could do 100 people. The current ones are usually very small, maybe of the order of 30 people.

Remember Kelling is by far the largest star party in the UK and if full will be close to 7-8 hundred astronomers there and is spread over a large area.  I must admit I am surprised that pitches are still available as it is normally booked out months before.

make sure you can black it out and keep its outside lights off. Are you bringing a telescope? If you are intending to image then making sure your laptop screen can be completely shaded.

I must admit I find it interesting that the EAA evangalists keep claiming it is visual observing. It isn't and never will be it is a form of cheap imaging. Similar things can be said about NV observing. Paying 6 grand or more for something that allows you to look at Sharpless nebulae does not seem to be good value to me. It is a shame that the commercial magazines just spend all their time pushing AP as I am aware that there are a lot of large visual telescopes still out there being used. It does seem however that at most star parties now the fields are bing overrun by imagers using tiny telescopes to take images of the same objects over and over again.  I agree with the poster who said that most imagers just want something, no matter how bad, to put on theri social media pages to gain likes.  In most cases they seem to know little about what they are imaging. I think most visual observers have at leats some knowledge of what they are looking at.

There is also astroadventures https://www.astroadventures.co.uk/.    Very dark skies