Phil Muffett

Tonight’s speaker is a long-standing member who joined the society back in 1982 at the age of 18,

He became interested in astronomy at an age that he cannot remember after his Grandfather showed him the Great bear and pole star from their backyard in Mexborough,

He learned his first constellations from a map in the back of a 1930s Encyclopaedia which he still has today,

During the 1960’s he followed the Apollo missions on the news while the mercury and Gemini missions were a little too early in his life,

During the 1970’s he became interested in the planets with the launch of Viking and voyager then became interested in spaceflight with the international joining of the space shuttle and Mir,

After moving to Swinton Phil’s real interest in astronomy took hold in the 80s after buying his first 60mm Tasco  which led him to me actually join the society,

From that point on he has been a continuous committee member devoted to its success, continuity, and outreach to the public,

He built the societies first 2m observatory at college in 1983 which was designed to be portable so any member of the society could use it and was the blueprint for the design of the 5m observatory which we now have on our own site at Hoober,

Over this period he also become interested in radio astronomy following the Mir space station, The international space station, Soyuz, and the space shuttle,

More recently he’s built his own yagi ariel to detect meteors entering the earth’s atmosphere,

I could go on!

Forthcoming Events

Previous Events

• Saturday, 2nd December 2023 - Astronomy Evening An evening with the stars and creatures of the night

• Saturday, 21st October 2023 - Postponed till December 2nd Astronomy Evening An evening with the stars and creatures of the night

• Thursday, 10th August 2023 - The Perseid meteor Shower

• Thursday, 6th July 2023 - What are Meteorites

• Thursday, 17th February 2022 - A Challenge to NASA from a domestic garage in Swinton

• Thursday, 11th March 2021 - Aricibo Radio Telescope

• Thursday, 5th November 2020 - The Oldest Computer in the World.

• Thursday, 23rd January 2020 - Orbiter

• Thursday, 10th October 2019 - Magnetometers

• Thursday, 5th September 2019 - Meteorites

• Thursday, 27th June 2019 - Destination Moon.

• Thursday, 14th March 2019 - Following the International Space Station

• Saturday, 9th February 2019 - PLANETS IN THE PARK VIII

• Thursday, 8th November 2018 - Magnotometers

• Thursday, 21st June 2018 - Mid Summer Night & Stone Circles

• Thursday, 16th November 2017 - Scanning for Meteors

• Thursday, 12th January 2017 - How to Observe Artificial Satellites

• Thursday, 8th September 2016 - "Where's the Sun"?

• Thursday, 17th March 2016 - The Observe-a-scope

• Saturday, 20th February 2016 - Planets in the Park V

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