Stargazing 2023 at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Name: Stargazing 2023 at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Start: 2023-01-27T17:30:00+00:00
End: 2023-01-27T20:30:00+00:00
Location: Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Friday 27th January 2023 from 17:30pm to 20:30pm

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Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Harwell, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, South East

The 2023 Stargazing at RAL will have plenty of activities for the whole family, whatever the weather. There’ll be meteorites, rocket building, comet making, face-painting, a series of fascinating talks, robots and stargazing.

We’ll have experts on hand to explain how they use the Diamond Light Source to learn more about meteorites and comets, and you’ll be able to visit the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source to learn how we use particle accelerators to learn more about space.

Planetarium shows will run throughout the evening (ages 5+ only), but places on these are limited owing to the size of our planetaria, and so are allocated by lottery.

There will be tours of the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Experimental Hall throughout the evening, but places on these are limited and so are allocated by lottery. Due to health and safety restrictions, these tours are only suitable for those aged eleven or over.

Tickets will be released on Friday, 13 January, at 07:30, 12:00 and 19:00.

Once the event is fully booked, you can sign up to our waiting list.

Please note that this has already taken place on 27/01/2023

Event booking

Tickets for this event will be available from 13th January 2023 from the Eventbrite website.

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Event darkness

The Moon has a big impact on the visibility of celestial bodies in the night sky. Try to plan your stargazing when there is no bright Moon at night as this is when the skies will be at their darkest.

The below chart shows if and when the skies will be at their darkest during this event. Moonlight is shown in light yellow and the Sun's twilight in light blue. Midnight on the date shown is shown as a white line with sunset to the left and sunrise the next morning to the right. A black background with stars shows the best times for stargazing.

Fri 27th Jan

First Quarter

33 % illuminated

Dark from 00:27 to 06:32

Dark for 6h 5m

Local light pollution

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is estimated to have light pollution levels similar to asemi-rural semi-rural location based on the latest data from the VIIRS satellite.