Observatory

The Bayfordbury observatory is located at 51.7748°N, 0.0948°W at a rural, relatively unpolluted site near Hertford, 30 km north of the centre of London.

The Remote Sensing Observatory is co-located with the Astronomy Observatory, operated by the Department of Physics Astronomy and Mathematics. Some of the research projects carried out at the observatory are described on the Research at Bayfordbury Observatory page. Recent observations, including weather data, can be found on the weather page.

Atmospheric observation instrumentation currently installed at the Observatory include:

• cimel CE 370-2 micropulse lidar on a scanning mount
• daytime and night-time all-sky cameras
• cimel CE-318 automatic sun photometer - with data processed and curated by the NASA AERONET network (see video)
• lunar photometer
• GNSS-based water vapour column measuring system
• two IR radiometers including a Nubiscope scanning radiometer
• pyranometerand a pyrgeometer for measuring downwelling broadband solar and infrared radiation, respectively.
• infra-red spectropolarimeter, with a view angle of 60°
• Ultra-sensitive sun polarimeter. This is a portable version of the PlanetPol polarimeter, capable of measuring fractional polarization down to one part per million. PlanetPol previously detected the alignment of atmospheric dust.