Just back from Kielder

[blinky]

Just back about half an hour ago from Kielder. Arrived at Friday lunchtime and the weather was a bit cloudy, by mid afternoon there was heavy drizzle Then amazingly it cleared and stayed clear till around 01:30 :lol: Before it got dark we had a quick look at the sun through Jamie's modded PST thingy and saw a massive promenance, was quite an amazing site, thats the first look at the Sun and I really enjoyed the view. Up to the castle next for a talk on optics, very informative

After dark i managed to get a couple of images of M51, M53 and the Black Eye galazy but will need to process them. We also had a visit from the BBC with Maggie Philbin, they are making a program on the Kielder observatory/star camp and Light pollution, think it is on in a couple of weeks.

Saturday did not look as promissing, woke up to clear skies but it soon clouded over and started snowing But the same thing happened again, around 8pm the clouds dissapeared and we had lovely clear skies all night. I had not expected this so had put the scopes away and left the mount out, was going to do some widefield stuff with the 350d. I took a couple of images but nothing amazing, I wandered around looking through the vairous scopes and got an amazing view of the Leo Triplet through an 18" Dob

This morning was freezing, down to -6 I heard and we left around 10:30, met some very heavy snow on the way back to edinburgh so glad I decided to come home today, dont think tonight will be very good but you never know after the past 2 days.

All in all an amazing weekend, 2 nights of clear skies. A lot of the time we were just looking upwards and marvelling at the sights! The beehive and double cluster were easy naked eye objects. I had trouble finding my way round there were just so many stars!

Got to meet some great folks, see some great kit and the astro talks were very interesting and informative! Will certainly be booking for autumn asap.

[beamish]

Glad to hear you had a good time and clear skies Craig . Look fwd to seeing your piccies too.

Karlo

[dogfish]

Hi Craig

Looking forward to seeing those images, they looked good from the preview I got of them.

The barman at the Anglers Arms told me that the Maggie Philbin programme about light pollution will be shown on 18th April on BBC 1 at 7.30pm.

Cheers, Martin

[daz]

Glad you guys had the skies - we didn't do quite so well "darn sarf"!!

[Starflyer]

Hi Craig,

I've just been looking at the images you've posted, it was well worth braving the subzero temperatures

Here's a few snaps I took showing the difference between Friday's and Sunday's weather.

Friday afternoon - proof that the sky can be blue at Kielder;

(click to enlarge)

Sunday morning at about 10:30; a bit of a change in the weather. Packing up in the snow was no fun at all

(click to enlarge)

Kielder castle in the snow

(click to enlarge)

Cheers,

Ian

[psychobabbler]

Ian

Great photos and confirmed my decision to leave early Sunday! Sorry i did not get to say cheerio before i went - hope to see you in the autumn. Better get that beer back to Martin before i start drinking it!

Cheers

David