December 21st is the winter solstice and as the longest, darkest night of the year, the best time to do some stargazing. And with Christmas just around the corner, our festive evening will weave a narrative around the remains of a local prehistoric burial chamber, a Chinese bi disc, a copy of Hamlet, a coin minted in 1572 and a painted Neolithic pot. We probably won't be able to get the orthostat to the scout hut, but everything else will be there to narrate a tale of ancient yuletide, polar astronomy and Christmas stars. Join us on Friday for some astronomy, archaeology and ancient stargazing, details on our website. But if you can't make it, we wish you a very happy Christmas and the very
Despite the atrocious weather last week there were two amazing opportunities to observe the skies from Bristol. On Tuesday morning we had a conjunction of the Moon and Venus, a fantastic sight to greet us first thing in the morning as we were putting the recycling out. Then on Friday we had the third in our schedule of Urban Astronomy sessions from the scout hut in Kewstoke Road. Mars was prominent in the southern sky, but unbeknown to many, Neptune was lurking behind it, as these two planets reached conjunction just earlier that afternoon. A conjunction is when stuff in the sky is nicely lined up from our perspective on Earth so this meant that we could see both Mars and Neptune in the same
