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Stargazing Live event at Shapwick Heath

Bill Reed, Andrew Jones, Mike Egan and I were at the Natural England Avalon Marshes Centre on Sunday 9th January for our ‘Tour of the winter sky’ event.

Enquiries for places were coming in just hours before it was due to start. We had set a limit of 40 in order to fit into the classroom we were using but in the end accepted an extra 10 on the understanding that they might have to ‘stand at the back’. Everyone turned up! It was a tight squeeze but there was a good atmosphere.

Despite some thin cloud at times, we took a naked eye ‘orientation’ sky tour of constellations and followed up with naked eye, binocular and telescope views of the moon, Jupiter, M 31, 45, 42 the double cluster in Perseus and other objects, until dew and frost put an end to the fun. We then headed for the warm classroom and refreshments, followed by a virtual planetarium show courtesy of Andrew and Stellarium. After that, Bill and I showed some of our images.

From the many emails received afterwards, it was obviously a very successful evening with many people asking us to run another stargazing event.

Thanks go to Simon Clarke, Manager of the Natural England, Shapwick Heath Reserve for allowing us to use their excellent facilities and for making us so welcome.

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 2:58 pm.

1 Comment »

  1. Well done for organising such a good event. It’s important we spread the word! We had 168 visitors direct from the BBC Stargazing Live webpage so the fame of CADAS is spreading.

    Comment by Ian — 12 January, 2011 @ 7:14 pm

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