Anyone fancy observing this evening?

[Kenny]

Clear, Moon-less skies tonight. Anyone fancy going out? Sevenoaks Prep School or Cudham?

[Klitos]

Sounds like a brilliant idea, except I got home from work and had a couple of beers and now can't drive...

[Kenny]

Repost.

Roger and I went out observing on Tuesday night. We used the grounds at Sevenoaks Preparatory School near Goddens Green (between Sevenoaks and Seal behind Knole Park). Normally a very dark site but I've very much gone off this site now. Roger and I were literally bathed in light from 3-4 different motion-sensitive kw-light sources most of the evening despite having deliberately walked deep into the sports ground.
- Lights in front of the school facing onto the road
- Lights behind the school facing into the sports ground
- Lights in the building (possibly caretaker accomodation) on the opposite side of the sports ground facing into sports ground.
- Carpark security lights from adjacent facilities carpark that was still being used at 11pm.

Shame. I really liked this site.

[Kenny]

I realise that some people have been at Kelling some or all of the week and travelling home ready to start the new working week, but it looks like it might be clear again tonight. Is anyone interested in going out observing / imaging around 9.30 / 10.00 this evening? At Cudham / Blacksmith's Arms?

[RobertM]

Sorry only just seen this, I've been busy modifying the undercarriage on the observatory roof.

Robert

[Kenny]

Don't worry. The weather turned out to be very changeable all evening from clear to completely overcast so I didn't bother going out in the end.

[Mike]

Would it not be better to give out SMS alerts or something like that for this? I for one might only check the forum once or twice a day so things like this will get missed until it is too late.

[Kenny]

Yes we have been discussing comms. Ivor wants to set up a mailing list for this but we've been waiting for Rick's return from Kenya.

[RobertM]

My thoughts are that the list should only go to those who 'opt in'.  Is that something we can provide for on the forum via something that does a subscribe/unsubscribe?

[Rick]

I'm back. Curiously, the big outage last week pretty much co-incided with me being in transit...

[Kenny]

My thoughts are that the list should only go to those who 'opt in'.  Is that something we can provide for on the forum via something that does a subscribe/unsubscribe?

Yes - we can set up a mailing list similar to the TOAST one where members can opt in or out.

[Klitos]

I thought you could subscribe to individual posts/topics on this forum; wouldn't this work just as well as a mailing list?

[Rick]

You can, but you don't have to be subsribed to a thread to post to it, and if you post to it then everyone who's subscribed gets an email (which may just say "there's something to read in that thread you were watching...").

The point of a specific list is that there's a lot more control over who can send messages through it, and it's also a lot easier to check who's receiving it.