I’m delighted to announce the first date of our 2025/2026 Astronomy and Stargazing programme at Abriachan Forest, which kicks off on Saturday, November 22nd, with an evening of outdoor stargazing and indoor planetarium guiding.
We also have guest talks planned later in the season covering deep space, the solar system and the Moon, with Professor Martin Hendry first in line on December 13th to discuss the “Empire of the Sun”: the past, present, and future of Solar System exploration. Astronomer Steve Owens will be visiting after Christmas for more tales of dark skies, with further announcements to follow in the new year.
I’ve simplified my local astronomy and stargazing tours based out of Inverness. The offering is now open to small groups of between 1 and 4 people. All tours now go ahead irrespective of sky conditions with vehicle based planetarium tours offered as a backup if conditions are poor.
Previous offerings were too complex to manage based on conflicting schedules and weather cancelations.
I’ll be working with the Kingsmills Hotel starting this observing season, delivering bespoke stargazing experiences based out of Inverness for small and medium sized groups.
Here’s some facts and figures highlighting the impact of the Star Stories astronomy programme, running up at Abriachan forest since 2018 (after a pilot in 2017). As principle researcher for the Spark Award grant I’ve been sharing impact data with STFC, who’ll use it to better target future funding for science and astronomy outreach.
Local schools, scouting and astronomy organisations engaged with
High quality home baking by @Judith Mackintosh
Examples of astronomy topics and themes explored during the events:
Meteors, Venus, Life of Stars, Saturn, Aurora, Variable Stars, Night sky photography, Buying a Telescope, Orion, Island Universes, Scale of the Universe, Mesolithic Stargazing, Renaissance Astronomy, Globular Clusters,Summer and Winter Solstice, Moon, Gravitational Waves, Multiverses, Lord Kelvin, Age of Universe, Planetary Nubulae, Black Holes, Space Telescopes
Astronomy speakers:
Martin Hendry
Steve Owens
Graham Bradshaw
Maarten De Vries
Claire Rayne
Anthony Luke
Eric Walker
Catherine Haymans
Stephen Mackintosh
Glasgow Science Centre team
Storytellers:
Barbara Henderson
John Burns
Suzann Barr
Trish Matthews
Daniel Allison
Allis Balance
Chris Holland
Fiona Macdonald
Clelland McCallum
Gordon MacLellan
Key Findings
To engage wide audiences try to blend science and culture.
Binoculars are an empowering and inexpensive tool to access the night sky with large groups
Well managed social media pages are a great way to build communities and drive engagement
Audiences, particularly young people, are highly engaged by very challenging and abstract cosmology (don’t dumb down)
The ‘wonder’ of the night sky is a highly motivating vehicle to increase engagement in science and mathematics
The Future
Star Stories is now a well established astronomy outreach programme within the Highlands, close to the city of Inverness. Its events continue to sell out each season . Our new programme of events will kick off at the start of the 2024 winter season in October. We look forward to expanding the scope of the work, reaching new audiences and developing new and exciting content that will forge a bridge into science, mathematics and astronomy.
Here’s a slightly shaky camera image I took from my home in the west of Inverness late on Saturday night. This is the strongest I’ve seen the Aurora from suburban Inverness. The glow was clearly visible naked eye with a bright arc and scintillating movement over the Black Isle.
There’s some speculation this display was connected to a large CME that erupted from the Sun on Thursday. While this is possible events like this are notoriously hard to predict with huge uncertainty in the transit time and direction of these high energy particle ejections from our home star.
Northern lights are not as rare as people think, especially in northern Scotland. The main impediment to seeing them is the simple fact that many people spend the winter evenings indoors. If you go for regular extended walks away from city lights and can find a good vantage facing north your chances of seeing aurora will increase significantly.
Nature Reserve Astronomy evenings will resume online this year, starting end of November with an Introduction to Buying a Telescope + short talk on the planet Mars.
Please follow this page for event links going up over the winter. Some of these events could be broadcast live if weather permits so please keep your page notifications on.
There will also be an Abriachan Forest event on the winter solstice, promoted separately.
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