Bellever Forrest

Today was one of those lovely bright autumnal days, so we dug out the book of Dartmoor walks that can be done with an all terrain pushchair and headed for the hills. What a fantastic day to be on the moor. It was so full of colour. We have been a bit slack with the camera lately so what better a day to remedy that.

I do need to get a field guide for mushrooms as some of the examples around look like they may be worth a try. I do have a bit of a thing about pictures of stone bridges the clapper gate bridge here dates from the 13th century.

After a lovely walk we didn't have time to stop at the Warren House Inn because of the the last Grand Prix of the season. I had to watch it live as I have heard the result of so many previous ones that I had recorded. Not quite the result that I was hoping for but still a very good first season for Lewis.

As the sun set the moon was bright in a fairly clear sky so it looked as though there would be a good chance of seeing some meteors from the Orionid shower this evening but it has clouded over.

Norman Lockyer

Time to dust off the blog, I have been meaning to do this for ages. It just needed something sufficiently interesting for me to write about. Saturday it happened. I visited the Norman Lockyer Observatory for an introduction to astronomy.

What a fantastic day. It started with a viewing in the planetarium and continued with an introduction to star maps. We continued with a look at the sun and the moon and a description of the planets. This was followed by a look at nebulae and galaxies. The final theory for the day was a look at telescopes and lenses. This initially seemed rather too reminiscent of A level physics for my liking but with a major difference it was interesting.

Finally we went on a tour of the historic telescopes including the instrument completed in 1871 that had a spectrometer attached and was used in the discovery of helium. It is amazing that it is now used alot by the junor section.