Last night a group of us went up to the school to view the Taurids. We estimated around 7-8 per hour. We saw a few large fireball size meteors streaming across the sky with their tails drawn out over a large distance.
We are hoping that the Leonids on the 17th November will produce a much higher hourly rate.

Whilst sitting and standing around on this cold and clear evening our esteemed Chairman showed us Uranus (which he found within  a few minutes) and Neptune in his 8 inch Dob.
We were lucky to be up to have our first viewing of the Orion constellation and within it the Orion Nebula which was as beautiful as I remember from last season. The Trapezium cluster was quiet clear within this.

We viewed Saturn and its glorious rings. Even more special this year knowing the Cassini-Huygens probe is in orbit. We managed to view at least 3 moons including the usual Titan that appeared at 5 o'clock if you took Saturn on the horizontal.

We viewed the stunning 0.45 Mag red supergiant Betelgeuse of spectral class M2Ib. We commented on how Aldebaran looked similar in colour and size. In comparison Aldebaran is a 0.87 Mag Orange giant of spectral type K5III. I have included both Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams below. Our own star the Sun is of course a regular yellow star of spectral type G2V. I mention this as nobody could remember last night including myself.

We also managed to setup Andria's new scope and now have a good feel of how to align it. Well the evening finished with myself and Brendan sitting behind the hedge out of the chilled wind until 1pm. I then went home to bed and Brendan to view the Moon :-)