| Status: | Active, open to new members |
| Facilitator: | |
| Facilitator: | |
| Group email: | Astronuts group |
| When: | On Monday mornings 10:00 am-12:00 pm Occasionally we will have an evening field trip to view the sky at night |
| Venue: | Methodist Church Cat Lane |
| Cost: | £2.50 |
Congratulations to this years quiz winners, Sue and Andy, at our Christmas meeting. Big thank you to Dawn who set the quiz
The Astronuts Go Meteor Watching
On the 12th August 2025 the Castle Bromwich U3A Group the Astronuts assembled at a member’s house for an evening’s ‘Meteor Watching’. The meteors, in particular were from the Perseid Meteor Showe. We were due to meet up on site on the 11th, but Mother Nature threw a nice cloud bank over us so we decamped to the following evening.
These showers are named after the constellation that is in the direction of the shower. They do not come from that constellation. The technique that is commonly set up for a meteor watch is that chairs are set out in a semi-circular format, the apex of the semi-circle is toward the Radiant.
This chair layout allows observers to look at different sections of the sky to catch meteors coming away from the point in the sky where they appear to come from. This is called the ‘Radiant Point’.
Over the evening the group observed fourteen meteors, the final one just as we were packing up the session (around midnight). Most were fast and short with very bright trails, some were several times brighter than the prominent star Vega, overhead in the constellation Lyra. Vega is a 0.03 magnitude star, very bright.
The number of Perseid meteors observed over the years appears to have reduced, particularly when observed from urban locations, maybe the results of increased light pollution making the fainter meteors no longer observable?
An enjoyable night in good company.
Dawn Passant
u3a Matters
We were pleased to find out we had made it into the u3a national magazine. Find us on page 78 of issue 69 Winter 2025
We are a fairly new group that finds looking up a great thing to do. Dawn is also one of our newer members of CBu3a with a long-time interest in what goes on in the sky above and in the universe beyond.
