A Short Spell of Sunshine – Solar Viewing at the ROG, Saturday 2 August 2025

After the disappointment of last week’s cancelled session, we decided to take a chance and go ahead with our planned solar viewing on Saturday 2 August – despite a forecast that gave little cause for optimism.

We knew we’d be lucky to get any clear skies at all, but in the end, we were granted a short spell of sunshine — just enough to make the session more than worthwhile. By 10.15am, we were fully set up at the Dolphin Sundial area. Clive brought along his Sky-Watcher Heliostar H-alpha telescope, which delivered stunning views of the solar surface whenever conditions allowed. Alongside our regular Coronado H-alpha scope and ever-reliable Sunspotter, we had a solid line-up of kit ready to go – and the Sun didn’t disappoint, at least for a while.

Several sunspot groups were clearly visible in white light, and although the prominences were modest in size, they offered enough detail to keep things interesting – even if they took a bit of guidance for first-time viewers to spot.

After around 90 minutes of intermittent but generally usable conditions, heavy cloud moved in just after 12.30pm, bringing the session to an early close. Even so, we still managed to welcome approximately 150 visitors – not bad for a session that might not have happened at all.

The team on the day – Phil, Eddie, Mike D, Helen, John, Simon, Clive, Katie, Mike M, Sue, Richard and Raymond – made it all work seamlessly, with everyone pitching in and keeping spirits high throughout. It was a pleasure to welcome Katie back to the team following her graduation from university – and, as always, there was plenty of good humour and camaraderie, particularly in the early part of the morning as we waited to see whether the skies would play ball.

There was also a minor technical issue: the Declination motor on one of our Sky-Watcher mounts appears to have seized. We managed fine with manual adjustments, and the mount will be swapped out ahead of the next session.

So – not our longest session of the season, but very much worth running. That makes ten successful events out of eleven scheduled attempts so far this summer, with four more still to come.

Our next session is planned for the weekend of 9 or 10 August, coinciding with the ROG 350 celebrations. Let’s hope our good fortune continues.

Pictures from the event (by Phil Benson, Simon Hurst and Mike Meynell):