Battling the Clouds – Solar Viewing at the ROG, Saturday 9 August 2025

As part of the Royal Observatory’s 350th anniversary celebrations, we hosted another public solar viewing session on Saturday 9 August. The forecast suggested cloud would be a constant challenge, and so it proved – especially in the first part of the day – but whenever the Sun broke through, we made the most of it.

Running a session with periods of no Sun to view is never easy – it puts extra pressure on volunteers to keep visitors engaged and the queue moving. Our team rose to the challenge superbly, keeping people entertained, answering questions, and ensuring that when the skies cleared, the flow through the scopes was as quick as possible without compromising the viewing experience. This was particularly important for the H-alpha scope, where everyone still got a good, unhurried look at the Sun.

Long queues formed early on, helped by what seemed to be a larger than usual number of family groups visiting the site. In the end, we had around 550 people look through the H-alpha scope during the course of the day – an excellent total given the conditions.

Huge thanks to our volunteers – Eddie, Adrian, Sara, Tej, Helen, Simon, Alec, Paul, Katie, Mike, Manish, Tim, Leslie, and Richard – for their efforts throughout the day. Special thanks to Adrian for bringing along his Vespera smart-scope and to Richard for his Seestar S50, both of which helped keep visitors entertained while they waited their turn.

With just three sessions remaining this season, we’ve now had 11 successful events out of 12 scheduled attempts – a fantastic achievement by the volunteer team. Our next session is on Friday 15 August, with a backup date of Saturday 16 August.

Pictures from the event (by Tej Dyal, Alec Knox and Mike Meynell):