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. [Read more about Event Horizon – future Star party events]
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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... 
In this month's edition:
It's going to be a busy late-March and into April. 
The first of the events (a last minute unscheduled event on the 18th) was predominantly clouded out. Mark and Keith therefore enrolled the scouts in helping to demonstrate the scale solar system. 
The date of the Vernal Equinox and officially the start spring in the northern hemisphere falls on March 20th this year. This is when the Sun's path - the ecliptic - first crosses the celestial equator on its apparent journey northwards into the sky... 
Born into aristocracy in 18th century France, Charles Messier stood at the threshold of a great observational age. Comets were the fascination of astronomers - their discovery and subsequent observation occupying many observatories; bringing fame and fortune to their discoverer...
The lighter evenings of April offer up an interesting stellar challenge, testing the observing dexterity of astronomers - casual or otherwise - in a race against time. 
If skies are reasonably clear on Feb 25th we have been invited to host a star party down at Boggle Hole Youth Hostel. The event commences at 19:00h until around 20:30h.
Betelgeuse is a star constallation of Orion, which is well known for being very unstable and possibly exploding in a supanova at any point. It's a star that is often studied by astronomers, but before they can understand how a star goes supanova, they need to understand what the steady state of a star really is... 
"So what are gravity waves", Prof Hendry asked? How did we detect them, and what can they tell us about the Universe. It took Einstein to figure out gravity’s true modus operandi. Gravity, Einstein showed, did not just make what goes up always come down. Gravity made the universe go round! ... 
Bard Gibson is the Professor of Astrophysics director at the Centre for Astrophysics in Hull. He and his research team use some of the most powerful computers available to generate simulations of large scale structures in the Universe (such as galaxies). And that's what his talk was about... 