Cardiff Astronomy Festival

A nice day out at the Cardiff Astronomy Festival last Saturday (25th July) hosted by the Cardiff Astronomical Society, at the Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

Three free talks, which sadly I was not able to attend due to manning the FAS stand.

There were a number of displays there - Telescope Planet had a big display of gear. Keiran McGrath brought alongs his SCS Astro gear. Paul Roche and the Faulkes team had an infrared camera that the kids found quite 'cool'. Martin Lunn had his Aurora Books along, and there were displays by Cardiff AS, Techniquest, and others that I don't completely recall...

However, I'm not sure it was quite the success of the previous festival held a couple of years back. Perhaps it was the time of year, and of course it was a rare sunny day.

Here are a few more pics:

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Last Saturday's CAS Meeting

A really interesting talk by Sam George about work he has been doing trying to detect extra-solar planets using low frequency radio astronomy by their auroral signatures.

Interesting to note that Jupiter's radio 'disk' is about 2.5 degrees, and should be observable from quite some distance off - so the same should apply to extra-solar planets round other stars.

Sadly the work did not provide any positive results - perhaps the frequencies being observed at were too high, or the levels were too low for detection - or both.

It sounds like a really interesting field of work. Sam having recently received his PhD is off to Calgary on a post-doc to do some more work on this - so will be interesting to get an update in a couple of years.

Cheltenham Science Festival - Engineering Apollo

Yesterday, an early start (for a Sunday morning), to see Chris Riley's talk - Engineering Apollo.

This was an excellent talk about the engineering behind the Apollo missions, and struck a real chord with me - remembering the events of nearly 40 years ago. I may have to dig out my copy of "The Dish" again...

A very bright sky after sunset last night too - but no NLC's apparently visible.

Cheltenham Science Festival - Star Party - Take 2

Last night saw our second star party evening at the Cheltenham Science Festival. Another really good turnout of people, and some difficult questions to answer !

Although early in the evening the weather looked promising, it actually turned out worse than the previous night. We were able to see the Moon through the cloud, but that was about it.

Much thanks to those that turned out this evening - Kevin Taylor (& Pauline) with 12" Dob, Peter Burgess with ETX, Tony Ireland with 5" Mak, Rob Davis (not sure what he had!), Steve Darnell - SGL member, with 16" Dob. And Rod Salisbury & Derek Maskell.

In the day I went to a couple of the lectures - one on Rutherford, which was very interesting, and on entitled Copernicus, but was really about the impact of arabic astronomy on western astronomy leading up the Copernicus. So not really not much about Copernicus himself. However, it was not a bad talk and Jim Al-Kalili (not sure thats spelt right) is always entertaining.

Cheltenham Science Festival - Star Party Last Night

Although the weather did not look promising, for those that toughed it out we were finally able to view the Moon & Saturn, and take in Albireo, and even M13.

A short talk to the assembled throng at 9:30 was followed by observing at 10:15 - the cloud thickened and thinned through the evening, but in the end it was quite a successful night.

Much thanks goes to Cotswold ASer's: Kevin Taylor (who brought his 12" Light Bridge), Peter Burgess (with his ETX), Paul Wheat (Binoculars and tripod), and Derek Maskell & Rod Salisbury.

Saturdays CAS meeting

A nice meeting in the 'new' hall. A very good turnout for Bob Mizon's talk about Comets and an update on the CfDS.
Nugget of the week from Bob - the root of the word "disaster" is from the Greek. Dis being bad and aster being star - so disaster is bad star! 'Not a lot of people know that'.

Cotswold AS AGM

Well last Saturday was the Cotswold AS AGM - like most AGMs not entirely enthralling. Elected as Coordinator for another (final!) year.

After the AGM Mark Gibbons gave a brief presentation about astrometry.net
It sounds like magic, but it could really work.
Of course it is not 'Real Astronomy' ...