Want to see the magic of the planetary parade? 🪐✨ 🌌 Explore upcoming Bayfordbury open events and plan your visit: bit.ly/4gSlMBa #PlanetaryParade #SpaceExploration #Astronomy #SolarSystem

Yesterday we ran the first event with our new inflatable planetarium! From 5th-7th February, we'll be at St Albans Cathedral showcasing the new planetarium as part of their Science Festival Week. To book us for your school or another event, see here: herts.ac.uk/bayfordbury/ba…

Tickets are available for our penultimate open evening of the season, on Feb 7th with the theme "Aurorae and Our Solar System" This is a great opportunity to learn about the spectacular aurorae we've witnessed over the past year! herts.ac.uk/bayfordbury/ba…

There is a lovely 22° halo around the Sun this morning. These halos appear when sunlight passes through hexagonal ice crystals in the atmosphere, and can often be seen in the winter months.

Here's a quick view of Jupiter, taken during a student practical session last night. From left to right, you can see three of Jupiter's moons: Europa, Ganymede and Io. You can also see Io's shadow on the face of Jupiter - it is the small dark spot near the upper right edge.

We've had a great time at St Albans Cathedral this week! We've been there with our mobile planetarium giving shows to local schools, and last night Emma Curtis Lake gave a public lecture. And now we're all back at the observatory for tonight's sold-out Open Evening!

And that’s a wrap for this season’s Open Evenings! Thank you to everyone that came along tonight - we had a great time, and hope you did too! Open Evenings will return next winter - but there will still be other opportunities to visit us over the summer, so stay tuned!

Last night, our robotic telescopes captured their 110,000th image in autonomous mode. That's 3,475 hours of imaging without human supervision!

One of our students took these spectacular photos earlier this evening, showing what is thought to be fuel from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket!

And one more view, this time from the aurora camera!

What were the strange lights spotted in the skies over Hertfordshire last night? ift.tt/W6EJZDt

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Ever wondered what the rain sounds like inside one of our steel domes?