New Club Creation

Thank you all for your support and advice. It is most useful, and encouraging.

Eamonn, I am delighted to make your acquaintance. I knew there was an observatory somewhere around Boyle, and I had planned to get in touch with you at some point. I'd love to come and pay you a visit sometime, see what you're up to and meet you in person. It looks like you're into proper research, by that I mean way above my level as a simple undergraduate, so it would be enlightening to say the least. I will email you soon so that we can chitchat without having to hijack the IFAS forum.

Hello Tof,
this is brilliant news, it would be excellent to have a club close by,

Hi Barr, and thanks for the support.
Since you mentioned "close by" I'm now wondering: where do you live?

Tof wrote: Hi Barr, and thanks for the support.
Since you mentioned "close by" I'm now wondering: where do you live?

Im in Sligo town, a stones throw away lol,
id be willing to go up your way from time to time for observing sessions as their nothing much
like that down here, theirs only one guy down here i be chatting regularly,
stargazers over here seem to keep very much to themselves, :bricks:

Well, let's try to do something about that, shall we?
As soon as I've got the whole thing set up I'll be sure to let you know. Finding a decent observing site is one of my main concerns. Going up some hill/mountain means being exposed to winds and also it makes it more difficult for simple punters to find the place. I was thinking of starting down at my place until a better option can be found. I live next door to the Glenview Folk Museum. My land lady runs a guest house/restaurant/pub, so that also means it might be possible in the future to organise a combo dinner+observing session on special occasions. It also means the place is easy to find. It's about 1 hour drive from Sligo, though, but wherever we do it, some people will have to travel. Also, I just got this 10" dobsonian for Xmas (the best I can afford for now) and I'm a bit wary of going around countryside road with it on the back of the car. I wouldn't want to damage it. So it's another reason to start here.

Hi there

St Cronans Stargazers is the IFAS school/community club. This is how it got started.
I simply went and had a meeting with the principal of the school, told him that I wanted to start
a local school based astronomy club that would be for the school kids but also involve parents and the local community.

He welcomed it will open arms and offered the school for meetings once a month.
So for over a year now we meet on random good evenings at the end of my road, which is close to the school.
Each month we have a regular talk by me or by a guest speaker.

I seng emails to the parents and they arrive with the kids, maybe three or four kids to each parent.
Sometimes if there is something really special to share I pop notes in the doors of the houses on my road (52)
Then the folks simply walk down the road to see Saturn or Jupiter or some nice conjunction or solar viewing or whatever it the coolest thing a public group can see.

As always for the main club members I encourage simple recorded observations, moon phases, constellations, planets, nebula et cetra. So the kids have built up little folders of work that they are very proud of.
Any opportunity to involve the group in global events is jumped at, and the school are very supportive of any activities that involve science and art together.

The parents, teachers and local community all benefit and appreciate the club
All are invited to the once a month talk which usually has around 50 to 60 attendees

The school paid for the IFAS insurance and annual fee
To me its a no brainer ,its win win to all , its also carbon friendly as there is very little driveing involved.
The school provide a web page to share what we get up to and achieve
It needs a little update as we did a lot of stuff in November and December


www.stcronans.ie/astronomy_club.html

This may give you some idea of how to set up an easy new fresh astronomy club that builds little astronomers for the future. The school club looses sixth class each year to second level but I still invite those kids and parents and they still come along

Best of luck

Deirdre Kelleghan
Vice Chair IFAS
@skysketcher