I am a member of our local group,but we tend to more into lectures from scientists than observing,and at the next rare organised night I'm working and can't get off. I was also a member of a community group,which was great,very informal,local scout groups and schools involved,but it was wound up due to council red tape. Shame,it was just the kind of thing the council bang on about too. Thanks for the link, I will definitely look into organised star parties. Cheers,Ian.
No problem if I find any other links I'll pass them on although I'm not finding anything on google. It might be worthwhile asking someone on there as they might have more info than I do.
We've had some lovely clear nights recently on South Wales :- last week I managed to see 3 of Jupiters moons (Io, Europa and Ganymede) through some 7x50 binoculars.
Been such a massive difference in what we can see since we moved out of South Manchester !
It's quite surprising what image you can capture just using a DSLR & tripod although you do have to work on the images to bring out any detail. You can do some basic imaging of planets using a modest 5" reflector or even a 3" refractor on a mount with an RA drive & modified webcam but beware when the bug starts you end up buying more & more kit. You can of course track the object manually but it's a lot harder to do.
The scope at the back in the previous picture near the caravan is my scope but it's added a few things since that picture was taken in March. Like a new NEQ6 mount Guidescope, guidecam, DSLR, various cables & a headache trying to get it all to work.
As for anything happening at Kielder I've no idea but there is an observatory there which I believe is open to the public although I'm not sure if that's just when there's event's on or not. As for the sky you'll have Jupiter shining nice & bright & its 4 moons although with our moon;
it might start to wash out some of the fainter objects but even that is good to look at as there's plenty of detail to see using a pair of binoculars. Orion always looks great even if you view the nebula with a pair of binoculars, the Plaeides is another nice one to view. If you download a free program called stellarium it shows you what's up in the night sky plus you can fast forward to a different dates. Also it will tell you when the ISS comes over it's amazing how fast that thing travels in the sky seen it 3 times now although imaging it is a whole different ball game.