ASTRONOMY: An out-of-this-world experience

Astronomy students WILL RENTON and GRACE STOCKDALE report on an evening with the stars as they explored the wonders of the night sky in deepest North Yorkshire

GCSE astronomy students enjoyed an out-of-this-world experience when they visited a local observatory and planetarium.

Limetree Observatory and Planetarium is a small astronomical facility on the outskirts of Grewelthorpe, near Ripon, built and run completely by volunteers.

It hosts a wide range of sophisticated telescopes with advanced locating and tracking features and is due to also get a new 16-inch optimised Dall-Kirkham reflector telescope to replace the old one pictured below.

We started the night at 6:30pm by attempting to use the telescopes to view the some of the planets that can be visible under good conditions.

However, much to our annoyance, the clear skies that had been viewed en route to the observatory had been nearly completely replaced by cloud upon arrival so unfortunately only a few people got to see the four moons and bands of Jupiter through the gaps in cloud.

Despite this, we were assured that going inside would make up for it.

We then moved into the newly built classroom for a ‘naked telescope’ demonstration.

Here, volunteer Martin showed us the wonders of how some different types of telescopes work using mirrors, lenses and a laser. It was great to experience the actual application of the theory learnt in lessons.

Following this, we moved on to the best bit of the night - the planetarium - and it did make up for the poor viewing earlier!

This giant 6.4 metredome, the same size as the primary mirror on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, uses an astronomical software called Stellarium and some projection techniques to project a 180° view of the night sky under perfect weather and seeing conditions.

In here we explored many aspects of the night sky including constellations, star life cycles, types of galaxies, sizes of stars, the expansion of the universe and so much more.

All of this was shown to us with an engaging presentation from Chris, another volunteer at Limetree, and some outstanding animation work from Martin.

Martin commented on the work carried out by Limetree Observatory:

“The observatory and planetarium are run by volunteers who have a passion for astronomy and love to share their passion with the public. We have been blessed with considerable grants which have allowed us to build a very professional facility for the people of Ripon and the surrounding areas. For this we are extremely grateful”

*For more information about Limetree Observatory please see their website below or check out their Facebook page:

Lime Tree Observatory & Planetarium

https://www.limetreeobservatory.com/