An Evening With The Stars...

Hey Everyone,

I hope you are all well! I am almost all caught up with my pre-Christmas blogs! I was going to wait until they were all finished to talk about a swap that I was thinking of hosting, but as time is drifting on I am going to post about it tomorrow morning so please come back and take a look!

Back to the blog at hand! Remember Christmas Eve Eve? Yes I know it feels so long ago now, but as part of my Christmas gift to the fiance I bought us tickets to go to Greenwich Observatory to see the stars! It was a special event called 'An Evening With The Stars' which included the planetarium show, a brief tour of the observatory, and a chance to look at the stars through their Victorian refractor telescope with a hot drink.

Unfortunately, as the night was cloudy, we couldn't look through the telescope, and instead had some fantastic talks about the telescope itself, time, and navigation which was all fascinating!

It was our first trip to Greenwich Observatory, set in the beautiful Greenwich park which has a beautiful view over London...

The Millennium Dome from the park

Lit up London!

We got to see the Greenwich meridian - where they shine a green laser beam out to mark the meridian line that is used to measure time zones across the world! You can just about see it here...

Can you see the green beam?

Beautiful London

The fiance & I by the light of the Greenwich Meridian!

I would urge EVERYONE to go and visit the observatory, especially on one of their special evenings so that you can see the beautiful view and maybe get a chance to really see some stars. The park looks fantastic too, but we weren't allowed to wander around as the park is closed after dark!

Just as we were leaving, the clouds started to clear (as was predicted on the forecast) and we managed to see the planet Jupiter with our naked eyes (as well as Orion and a few other constellations that they had pointed out to us the planetarium show - which was also fantastic!)

You can still see Jupiter with your naked eyes now in the night sky. Look for the brightest 'star' in a clear night sky! You may think it is the north star (or pole star - polaris) but currently the brightest star is not a star at all but Jupiter! Just think how amazing it is that you are staring at a planet over 576 million miles away! *sigh* I love science!

Anyway, we decided to take advantage of the need to drive home at a late hour on a quiet night and drove back from Greenwich through central London to home in North London! We used to do this more often - just drive into London late at night to see the sights and stop at Brick Lane for a bagel. So it was lovely to do it again, and a great opportunity to see all the sights lit up for Christmas!

The shard!

Going over Tower Bridge

The Tower of London

The Southbank & London Eye!

All in all in was an amazing evening! Such a lovely start to Christmas and such a nice thing for us to do together as we both love astronomy and science! I can't emphasise how strongly I think you should all visit Greenwich Observatory! It really is fantastic!

Jewel xxx