Monday 30th March to Sunday 5th April 2026
Don't forget that we will have changed over to British Summer Time or BST on Sunday 29th March, when the clocks moved forward one hour and we lost a bit of sleep! To keep things simple, through this half of the year, I always quote local observing times in BST.
During the winter months we use GMT or Greenwich Mean Time and GMT is a solar time zone based on the Earth's rotation. Scientists use a different time standard called UTC or Universal Time Co-ordinated, which is based on a high-precision atomic clock.
Before UTC came along, GMT was used as the international standard, based on mean solar time at the Prime Meridian, that happens to run through the Royal Observatory in
GMT and BST can be written in a 12-hour or 24-hour format, but to be correct, UTC is only ever quoted using the 24-hour system.
Talking of things being correct, did you know that one of the best-selling music albums of all time is wrong? The "dark side" of the Moon refers to the portion of the lunar surface not illuminated by sunlight on a particular day as our celestial neighbour goes through its different phases. The side of the Moon that is always facing away from us and we can never see it (whether or not it is illuminated by the Sun) is technically known as the "far side". So the Pink Floyd album should really be called "The Far Side of the Moon"!
www.starsoversomerset.com
Graphics and images courtesy of Wikipedia
Copyright Adrian Dening and Radio Ninesprings 2026
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