Calling all star gazers!

Hi Everyone,

First off my compliments to the IFAS for a great website which caters for all aspects of astronomy and is a great knowledge resource for lone astronomers like myself, which brings me on to the reason for this post.

I'm living in Kilkenny and would love to set up an Astronomy Society for the City and surrounding areas, to meet with like minded people and scout out some good observing sites and share our passion and knowledge on such a great subject.

If anyone out there would be interested in helping set this up It would be much appreciated, likewise if any of the current clubs/societies would have any advice in how they went about starting up theirs it would be great.

Thanks in advance,

C

Hi C,

Welcome to our humble astronomical abode! It's great to see an enthusiastic amateur wanting to set up another local club. It has been tried and tested over the years, some with success, others with failure, but the excitement of it all remains the same. Check out these forums on South Kerry Astronomy Group and St. Cronin's School in Bray, both with recently set up clubs. Many of us here both on the committee or just frequent visitors have lent a hand at offering advice and links, information and tips to actually visiting in person and presenting a talk and chipping that little bit extra.

There are loads of sources of help for you here. Things like the Observing Challenge Handbooks (see link on homepage) would be a great start for any one person wanting to learn more and any one club starting up and looking for a direction of where to hook a potential audience to what's up in the sky.

Ask your questions, take your time, make contact with friends and like-minded enthusiasts in your area - the rest will fall in to place, and quite easily at that.

Hope this helps,

Seanie.

Hi C,

I'd just like to echo Seanie's comment, don't be shy make a list of questions and post them up here and we'll try to help out.

Are there any amateur astronomers in the Swords/Portmarnock/Malahide area? I'm planning an impromptu event with beaver sea scouts later today (Saturday 5 November 2011). I only have a binoculars, a small celestron maksutov spotter and a small refractor (which developed a cracked tripod strut earlier this evening ) If anyone would like to help and show off a nicer scope, please let me know. Thanks.

It was a brilliant night and the sea scouts enjoyed three crowd pleasers: Luna, Pleiades and Jupiter unguided at 30-40x through 70 and 90mm scopes. I only had to pull the objects back into view a dozen times for about 50 kids.

Some brought toy-store telescopes (2-3" refractors, plastic tripod). I didn't "dis" the small scopes but pointed out that the importance of the mount (as even the plastic eyepiece holder/brace on my LIDL Bressler had failed the previous night) and that the best views from such small scopes are with the lowest power eyepiece.