Welcome to GALAXY SEASON

When I was at school I was fascinated by space, but also by the weather. I devoured the library’s science books, describing how the weather changed with the seasons.

Those books depicted the seasons with delightfully sentimental illustrations. Spring was represented with lambs gambolling in fields of wild flowers; summer was a beach scene with children making sandcastles; autumn showed a child in a raincoat and wellies splashing through puddles; winter was a snowman, surrounded by a family dressed in scarves and gloves and a robin in a nearby holly tree. Eventually, I learned that the night sky has seasons too: as the months pass, amateur astronomers look at different celestial objects at different times of the year. In summer, we observe the misty band of the Milky Way and noctilucent clouds (NLCs). In autumn, we gaze again at the star-frothed spiral of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, and frosty winter nights belong to Orion, its nebulae and glittering star clusters.

Spring is ‘galaxy season’, when telescopes