MAC hosts 'Night Sky Over Laois' for Heritage Week 17/8/13

On Saturday August 17th, members of Midlands Astronomy Club (Jason Fallon, Declan Molloy, John Lally, and myself) traveled to Stradbally Library by invitation of Catherine Casey to host one of Laois Heritage Week's opening events. We were fortunate that there were going to be clear skies, so we had hoped that, since the event was advertised from 9pm on a Saturday night - and that it was called 'The Night Sky Over Laois' - that we would get a chance to haul out the scopes and get a look upwards at some stage.

And that we did!

A few short talks and demos were held inside, then at 10:07pm on the button, we all headed outside to view the passing of the ISS. We caught a few (Perseid) meteors, the Moon, and some deep sky objects. Young and old alike came from the village and surrounding areas to join us, where we stayed till around 11:30pm. It was great fun, and MAC has been asked to come back again, possibly for Science Week (at least).

To make matters even better, our event was the featured one for the start of Laois Heritage Week in the Laois Nationalist Newspaper (August 20th edition)!

Click on the thumbnail to view the larger image

Seanie.