After a recent meeting with the city council, it was announced that the Mayfield Environmental Education Centre will close. No definite date has been set yet but it is likely to be by September. The current economic climate and the large expenditure required to run the centre mean this decision is realistic.

The society has spent many exciting years at Mayfield and is disappointed with this announcement, however, a part of the centre's grounds may be allocated to the society to develop an observatory in this dark sky site.

The society will continue with its speaker's and beginners' evenings at a new location and the observing evenings will take place at a new dark sky site. These new locations will be announced when we have investigated meeting rooms and looked for a suitably dark site. 

If you have any comments or ideas for a new venue, please use the Contact tab to message us.

Steve Adams, Society President

Our first "Astronomy in the Pub" venture went very well with an enthusiastic audience of over 100 people who managed to see Jupiter and Orion during cloud breaks as well as be entertained by several talks in the pub.

Over 150 of us enjoyed a great talk in Sheffield University's magnificent Firth Hall from the first British ESA astronaut, Tim Peake. He told us about the life and the tough training of an astronaut and how the future of manned space exploration may develop. Several schools and student groups attended and we all learned a lot about the finer detail of being on the ISS.  More information about Tim can be found on Wikipedia and an interesting interview can be found here.  

We were invited to Lydgate Junior school to present "An Evening of Astronomy" which was a great success, with around 120 children and adults listening to a series of talks, playing with our Mars Rover and taking away lots of freebies to inspire them to find out more about astronomy and space.

Our Stargazing Live event was a great success despite a mainly cloudy sky.  Over 120 people enjoyed a series of interesting talks, looked at our impressive displays and chatted to our knowledgeable astronomers.  A few even managed to see Jupiter and its moons before the clouds rolled in.  A great evening.

A clear sky brought many people to Mayfield to see the Moon through many different types of telescope.  They were also able to learn more about the Moon, space missions associated with it and why Neil Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the Moon.  

We travelled to Castleton in the Peak District to take part in a Sungazing-style event as part of the National Parks Week celebrations.  Many visitors to the town stopped to view the Sun through our telescopes and they all learned a little bit more about our closest star.

This image of the Sun was taken by SAS member Chris Walker in one of the few fleeting gaps in the clouds on an otherwise grey and sometimes drizzly Sungazing Live event.  The image is made more impressive by the fact that it was taken using a mobile phone held up to the telescope eyepiece.  Well done Chris!

Despite some heavy showers (look at the sky in the background!), the Sun was seen by many enthusiastic visitors who were treated to some excellent talks in the bowling pavilion at the end of the afternoon.

A hardy group of members headed up Ringinglow Road to get a good viewpoint for the transit, visible from dawn at 04:45.  As usual for an important astronomical event, no Sun was to be seen but they followed the event live using an iPad on the Internet.  Roll on 2117!

Our first Sungazing of the year and guess what?  The Sun actually shone most of the afternoon, despite dire weather predictions.  Lots of sunspots and an enormous prominence were seen by the many people who visited us at Mayfield.

Darren isn't happy with the final quality of his new images, as the weather prevented good alignment of his telescope. Intermittent mist and thick cloud kept obscuring portions of the sky, but in the breaks he managed to capture his best images yet. The pick of the images is here, but more can be seen on our Gallery page. 

Click on the gallery link at the top of this page, then look for the link to the date he took the images, 2011-08-09.

Using a webcam we took some movies of the Sun in white and Hydrogen alpha light which were then processed using Registax.  Here are the results showing sunspot groups 1260, 1261 and 1262 (left to right).  In the Ha image (right) you can also see some prominences around the limb and near the sunspots.

We had a great afternoon at Bole Hills Bowling Green, showing the Sun to many visitors and passers-by.  Using our specialist solar telescopes we saw sunspots and some prominences and they all left with a new appreciation for our nearest star. 

  Jupiter and Mercury (top) in the evening sky 

as taken by Steve Adams.