MAC and its 100 Hours of Astronomy this weekend: Apr 3rd/4th

Hi everyone,

just to let you know in case you have been too lazy to look here to see what's been going on in Ireland for this international event this weekend:
www.100hoursofastronomy.org/component/eventlist/search

that the Midlands Astronomy Club will be taking part in the following ways:

Friday April 3rd in Scoil Diarmuida, Castledermot (Carlow)
The night will get under way from 8pm with a series of short slideshows followed by observing in the school yard.

Saturday April 4th in Scoil Mhuire, Tullamore (Offaly)
The night will get under way from 8pm with a series of short slideshows followed by observing in the school yard.

If you can lend a hand any time, any night, we would really appreciate it. Members will be in each venue from around 7pm onwards. There is no admission charge, and you are invited to bring along your own telescope or binoculars, and the whole family!

You can contact us at tullamoreastronomy@yahoo.co.uk if you need further info.


Clear Skies!

Seanie.

Report of Saturday April 4th, Tullamore

MAC members turned up and got things organised in Scoil Mhuire with the hopes of a good attendance to take advantage of the darkening clear skies. Only when a few people turned up after 8pm did we find out that another school in the town was holding a drama night - their cast had 120 kids alone, so I think attention was diverted from Astronomy for this one!

However, by 9pm we had about 30 people - adults and kids - and 6 telescopes on display in the yard. The Moon, Saturn, Sirius (What's that bright one there?), the Perseus Double Cluster, The Pleaides, the Orion Nebula were favourite targets. We stayed out until almost 10pm when the crowd began to filter away.

The observing was so good we didn't do ANY of the talks inside! Pictures and a report from our Friday night event in Castledermot to follow later.

Clear Skies,

Seanie.

Report of Friday April 3rd, Castledermot

To kick off the 100 Hours of Astronomy MAC had decided to be adventurous and hold two separate observing sessions, the first of which was held in Scoil Diarmada National School, Castledermot, Co. Kildare on Friday 3rd April

In keeping with our dreadful record with Irish weather the Friday night was 100% clouded over, to make matters worse, for the previous two days in Castledermot the skies had been crystal clear. Regardless of the weather we had promised to show up and give some talks but we were expecting a poor showing from the locals. Boy, were we wrong!!!

Although the event was not due to kick off until 8pm, from about 7:30pm onwards we had people arriving until about 8:15pm. By that time we had approx 50 people, far better than we could have expected considering the weather.

The plan for the night consisted of creating a number of display stands and setting up laptops where visitors could play with some astronomy software and a give a series of short talks. The display stands showed information about telescopes, the development of the ISS and general information on astronomy issues and hands-on demos with 9 laptops set-up running copies of Stellarium, Virtual Moon Atlas and Celestia so that visitors could sample these applications. All of the applications available to demo on the night were put onto CD and handed out to visitors along with the clubs newsletter and a copy of the April edition of Sky Maps.

Michael O’Connell gave an interesting talk on shooting stars and had different samples of Meteorites which were handed around to much interest of those that attended. We were also very lucky that two of the teachers and the school principle were in attendance and genuinely seemed interested and impressed by the displays and talks presented. Who knows maybe this might lead to further opportunities to present astronomy to the school.

My thanks to Declan, who helped me set-up all the display stands and to Darren and Michael for talking to the visitors and providing their assistance especially when they travelled so far. All-in-all a successful night’s outreach event especially considering the poor weather.

Ok this is a wierd one. I couldn't see the pics and just got the red X boxes. I 'Viewed Source' to see the links to the images in the forum page source code. Thinking Arty Farty had formatted his image links wrong I reposted them but got the same series of red x's.

I then pasted the image links into a browser address bar and was able to view the images directly. Then when I came back to the forums and refreshed the page, the image I had just directly viewed in a separate browser window now appeared within Arty Farty's post. As I then viewed each image directly in the other browser window and then refreshed, they all became visible within arty farty's post.

Bug in the forum software or bug in IE7 ??

But I digress...Lovely set of pics John. Nice that the kids still got to see some interesting displays and talks on Meteorites despite not being able to do some viewing due to the weather.

I see you've bought a shroud for your Lightbridge BTW

Hummm, I have to admit I had trouble with this when I set it up last night but I thought I had it sorted. Here's a link to the album where you can view all the images from the night.

100 Hours of Astronomy - Friday 3rd April 2009 (Castledermot)

Great stuff , indoor and outdoor astronomy , the only way to go in Ireland.

Do you guys want me to take this report and images for the official 100 Hours event
report ??

Deirdre Kelleghan
PRO IFAS
President IAS