The Observatory
If the weather permits there are observing sessions open to the public on a Friday evening.
Details of opening times and the site’s location can be found on the Observatory page.
The observatory also opens on the first Sunday morning of the month from 10am until 1pm in support of Abbey Leys Farmers’ Market – again, weather permitting.
Recent Images – 24th April 2026 : Friday observing
We were joined by over a dozen visitors on Friday. Having been thwarted by poor weather for much of the year thus far, we were very pleased to see such a good turnout.
There were 4 telescopes running: the RASA in the roll-off shed, the Celestron 9.25 in the dome and, in the compound, a manually operated Skywatcher and a robotic SeeStar S50. The Celestron and Skywatcher were being used as visual instruments observing the Moon and Jupiter; the RASA and SeeStar were imaging deep sky objects – the Owl nebula and the Hercules globular cluster. That being said, we had some great images of the Moon from various phones held up to the Skywatcher eyepiece… what a souvenir to be able to take home!
Mark Holmes held his iPhone SE camera up to the eyepiece of the Skywatcher telescope to produce this fantastic image… and only “slightly tweaked” it in post-processing.
For more images taken on the night, see the Images page.
Meetings
HLCO holds meetings on the second Thursday of each month in St John’s church room (location details here). Talks in astronomy and space research are given by invited experts or members of the HLCO team themselves. A small charge is made for these events. See below for details of future meetings.
We are always on the lookout for speakers. If you have an astronomy-related topic you’d like to share with a group of like-minded individuals, please get in touch by emailing hlco.steering@gmail.com
Upcoming HLCO Meetings
- May 14th 2026
Something different this month…
We’ve all heard rumours that the Moon Landing was faked because of “anomalies” like flags waving in the breeze, no stars being visible in the photos, and so on. Can any of these claims withstand hard scientific scrutiny… or even just a common sense evaluation?
Whether you’re a believer or a doubter, join sceptic, cartoonist and graphic novelist ‘Polyp‘ for a fun, audience-led discussion covering ANY of these claims you want carefully examined… while learning some of the fascinating basic science involved, e.g. why WOULD anyone want to cover a lunar lander in ‘tin foil’?!
You can find out more about Paul (aka Polyp) at his website at polyp.org.uk, though one thing he doesn’t mention there is that his degree is in the History and Philosophy of Science. It promises to be a fun session!