ORMSKIRK ASTRONOMY EVENING - FRI 7 MAR 2003

ORMSKIRK

ASTRONOMY EVENING

FRIDAY 7 MARCH 2003 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Members of the Liverpool Astronomical Society, (founded in 1881), will display several telescopes for viewing the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn, if clear. There will also be an illustrated talk on astronomy.

This event is free, and is open to all members of the public.

For more information contact:-

Liverpool Astronomical Society

Geoff Regan, Observatory Director - 0151 292 7165

Dave Owen, LAS Sidewalk Astronomers - 07778 454524

EVENT REPORT BY DAVE OWEN

I arrived at about 19:38 to find that fellow LAS members Jim Stacey, Steve Southern, Graham Roberts and Dave Thomson were already there. The weather was fairly wet so it did not seem likely that we would be able use any of the telescopes that we had brought; Steve's 9.25 inch Celestron and Jim's 5 inch Maksutov.

I set up a solar system slide show with Dave Thomson for about 10 people while Steve Southern, in another room, did a quiz, with the help of his laptop PC.

At about 20:05 I started a second slide show, this one concentrating on objects beyond the solar system. Most of the 35 visitors were quite young, between 5 and 15, and asked a lot of questions.

As in previous years, the college was able to provide an inflatable planetarium. Dave Thomson was able to get a guided tour of the college observatory, which contains a 5 inch Cooke refractor.

When I finished my two slide shows I found that Jim had been able to use his 5 inch telescope, with Graham holding an umbrella to ward of the showers! One big group were able to get a look at Jupiter.

Hopefully, (we can always hope), next year's event might get some clearer skies that will enable us to show more of the night sky to our visitors.

This event concluded the 2002/2003 LAS Sidewalk Season. The highlight was the visit of John Dobson in September 2002. This was preceded by a fairly successful event, weatherwise, in Halewood, earlier in the month. We were then clouded out for two consecutive events. The next two events were not only clear, they also benefitted from the presence of our TROK 30 inch Dobsonian. The final two events were clouded out so, overall, we had a pretty good run of weather this year, for Britain.

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