Both of the early June Star Parties went ahead as scheduled.
The event on the 3rd drew a reasonable crowd over the duration. Solar observations were initially possible, the sun still above the horizon low in the NW and a noticeable sunspot grouping was visible, which was an unexpected bonus. Once the sun had set attention turned to the moon, a gibbous phase with some lovely detail on show, particularly around the Clavius crater area.
As twilight deepened a little further Jupiter emerged, a pleasing view, with considerable, colourful on show and all four Galilean moons. Later on, Saturn was picked up low to the horizon, not brilliant detail it has to be said, but the rings could be made out, much to the satisfaction of the public... [Read more about Event Horizon]
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In this month's edition:
Many WDAS Members will have heard Sean Paling’s talk about hunting for Dark Matter in Boulby Mine, and followed updates of how successive experiments are progressing. So let’s take another look at Dark Matter: why we think it’s there and what it is.
Our planned star party on May 27th from the West Cliff, unfortunately fell victim to the thundery breakdown of what had been a period of fine, settled and warm weather during the week beforehand. 
As you will know Paul Money had to cancel his talk on May 9th due to family illness. Paul sends his apologies and will reschedule as soon as he is able to. Fortunately Paul had given us a couple of days notice, allowing time for cancellation notices to be placed on the website and in the local media. Stop Press... 
This event has now been postponed a few weeks whilst the Holiday campsite undergoes new staff training, apparently apart from other issues they have been incredibly short staffed. The delay will be used to further promote a future event: the management would like to do this properly and would also like to be on hand. No definite dates yet, but we may be looking at late May or early June.
For the second year in succession our Star party event planned for visiting pupils of Ayresome Primary school in Middlesbrough, went ahead under crystal clear skies. (Shock horror, yes, it is hard to believe) Requested by Libby Lavelle, Assistant Head Teacher, after last year’s successful evening which delighted and enthused the pupils, this year’s two dozen strong party of 10 and 11 year olds were already excited by the prospect of something similar.
Miranda has some very distinct features that have left astronomers wondering why it’s so ugly. As well as the usual craters and pockmarks that cover any rocky object with basically no atmosphere, Miranda has deep, almost parallel gashes running along its southern hemisphere. It looks a bit like a ball of yarn. These deep grooves are confined to three regions in the Southern hemisphere.
Just to reminder that we shall be hosting a star party event for visiting pupils from Ayresome Primary School & Lego Innovation Studio up at the Whitby Youth Hostel on April 12th. Elizabeth Labelle; assistant Head Teacher was impressed with the pupil response and feedback after last year’s inaugural event, and has contacted the society with regards to host another one this year. The start time is around 20:30h at the WHA on the east cliff. 
I don’t believe it! The Eskdale ‘Star night’ (Wednesday 22nd) unfortunately coincided with the only bad weather night of the week so our planned outdoor observations were quite out of the question. No scopes then, but with a new looking inflatable planetarium brought over and manned by York University boffins, who needed clear skies. All we needed was somewhere to use for the scale solar sytem(s). An ideal location was at hand – the main school corridor, which at nearly 60 mtrs long was tailormade for our demo... 
It all started in 1924, when Edwin Hubble proved galaxies are very distant objects, each containing millions or billions of stars, bound together by gravity. Within a few years, he set up a system to classify these galaxies by shape; a system which is still pretty much the system we use today... 