Scotland

December Stargazing at Abriachan – Featuring Professor Martin Hendry

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment

Join me on December 13th up at Abriachan Forest (a Dark Sky Discovery site) for an evening of stargazing and astronomy with Professor Martin Hendry. (ticket links in comments)

If skies are clear Martin and I will host an outdoor stargazing session and discussion under the stars (with potential telescopic views of Jupiter and Saturn). Following this Martin will present his indoor guest talk titled “Empire of the Sun”: the past, present and future of Solar System Exploration.

The Abriachan team will also be on hand to keep younger (and older) audience members entertained with some suitably themed STEM activities.

Martin Hendry is Vice Principal at the University of Glasgow and Vice President of the Royal Society Edinburgh. As former Head of the School of Astronomy and Physics he continues to be a passionate advocate for STEM education and science engagement with schools and public audiences. He is the author of more than 200 scientific articles and is a senior member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the global team of more than 1400 scientists which made the first-ever detection of gravitational waves – a discovery awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Due to site and classroom capacity, booking via Eventbrite is essential. Admission is free for under 16s with accompanying adults but please inform Abriachan of any large booking requests.For directions to the forest classroom please follow directions to Abriachan Forest Classroom.

Ticket Links can be found here.

Finding the Andromeda Galaxy Naked Eye

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment

This October I’ve been carrying out night sky survey work as part of a community project to certify Strathnairn as an International Dark Sky Park. This has involved lots of travelling about late at night taking sky quality meter (SQM) readings when conditions are just right – clear skies and the Moon and Sun well below the horizon. You can read about this dark sky conservation work here.

While I’ve been out under the stars I’ve filmed a few stargazing video for my community pages. Here’s a popular one on finding the Andromeda Galaxy – our biggest close galactic neighbour. It always amazes me that you can observe this object with the naked eye, and see the accumulated light from over 100 billion stars at a distance greater than 2 million light years!

Sounds of the Cosmos

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment

We had a wonderful evening of music and astronomy this Saturday up at Abriachan Forest.

The evening began with a unique premier – a live analogue synthesiser set from Nick Scroggie and Maarten De Vries of QRM, riffing beautiful melodies, sounds and effects in realtime against a montage of space and astronomy themed visuals I’d created for the evening.

Afterwards we had a virtual planetarium tour and talk on Supernovae, before finally getting some breaks in the cloud and heading out to see Jupiter and several nearby constellations and bright stars.

The development of the musical and visual concept is worth mentioning. Maarten and I discussed the idea of bringing astronomy visuals together with drone music about a year ago, but various other commitments got in the way of execution until earlier this year when Maarten and Nick agreed to test out the concept at Abriachan.

I developed a rough chapter outline for the visuals based on a journey of increasing scale through the universe. Beginning on Earth, then moving past our solar system into the distant stars, before finally arriving at the grandest realm of all – the galaxies. I sourced hundreds of images and video clips from NASA and other space agencies, downloading the highest resolution renders I could find.

During the visual editing process I used one of QRM’s ‘Drone Day’ sets for musical inspiration, timing the fades, pans and transitions to match the general pacing and atmosphere of the music. After a first draft I handed the visuals over to Nick and Maarten who then used it to develop some very rough musical concepts, split into acts to match the visual chapters .

It should be stressed that Maarten and Nick’s music was not in any way pre-recorded. The whole performance was live, with melodies, drums and base lines setup and generated on the fly via analogue synthesisers as they watched the visual footage. The only samples used were some spot effects Nick either recorded locally or sourced from BBC repositories.

I’ve put together footage of the event on Youtube and embedded it above for your enjoyment. Feedback from the audience was incredibly positive and we have tentative plans to deliver something similar in the future..

The next Star Stories event will be mid December. Look out for details appearing soon.

Comet A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment

Comet A3 spotted and photographed naked eye from Sicily.

I’ve recently posted guides on observing the bright comet A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS from northern latitudes in mid October. As it happened I was travelling in Sicily during the initial (evening) observation window but wasn’t holding out much hope of seeing it given likely sky brightness and the comet’s relatively low elevation above the western horizon

I was however delighted to see and photograph it during very clear naked eye visibility on the evening of October 13th, near Noto in southern Sicily. The comet was so bright I could actually see it through the front windscreen of my car when travelling along a quiet farm road, and promptly pulled over for better views, capturing these images with my mobile phone.

In the first image Venus is the bright planet to the left and comet A3 is clearly visible with nucleus and tail extending in a pronounced vector away from the location of the Sun (below the western horizon).

The tail of a typical comet is absolutely enormous (sometimes stretching tens of millions of miles back from the nucleus), and comprises an ionic dust cloud of diffuse material blasted away from the comet by the intense solar radiation of the Sun.

Meanwhile, back home in Scotland, some followers also spotted and photographed the Comet. Below are two such samples captured by Howard Taylor in Dumfries & Galloway (1st image below) and Caroline Hay outside Carluke (2nd image below).

To see the comet for yourself look towards the western horizon after sunset, as skies darken to an azure blue. The comet will rise higher in altitude going into late October but may unfortunately lose brightness as it recedes back whence it came to the still and dark fringes of the Oort cloud.

If you miss A3 this time you’ll need to be cryogenically frozen for a good 80,000 years before it makes a repeat return to Earth’s night sky.

Ticket Links for Sounds of the Cosmos Abriachan Special

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment
Thin waxing crescent Moon above Abriachan Forest

Tickets are now up for the launch event of 2024 Astronomy season at Abriachan Forest. A special live synthesiser set from QRM will accompany the usual stargazing and astronomy.

“The new stargazing season at Abriachan Forest (a Dark Sky Discovery site) gets underway on November 2nd with a special musical themed event featuring local analogue synthesiser group QRM. In addition to the usual stargazing and astronomy, QRM will play a fully live synthesiser set against a backdrop of space and astronomy themed cosmic visuals.

Event format is weather proofed so please book with confidence. As well as our indoor synthesiser set from QRM we’ll have outdoor (or indoor) night sky guiding with astronomer Stephen Mackintosh plus possible telescopic views of visible planets.

Refreshments and home bakes available. Due to site and classroom capacity, booking via Eventbrite is essential. Admission is free for under 16s with accompanying adults but please inform Abriachan of any large booking requests.“

You can final all details and book your tickets here.

Stargazing Season Launch with Sounds of the Cosmos at Abriachan Forest

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment

The new stargazing season at Abriachan Forest gets underway on November 2nd with a special musical event featuring local analogue synthesiser group QRM. In addition to the usual stargazing and astronomy, QRM will play a fully live synthesiser set against a backdrop of space and astronomy themed cosmic visuals.

Further details and ticket links for this launch event (and others) will be posted here on my blog or Facebook page in the next few weeks.

You can sample some of QRM’s live performances here. We anticipate the Abriachan performance to be about 30 minutes long with some Q&A with the band afterwards.

Small Group Evening Stargazing Tours in Inverness

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment

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.

Please read details of the full offering here.