Eddington Astronomical Society

I have had an interest in the sky at night for many years but have never really pursued it with any great enthusiasm; having watched with interest the BBC programmes ‘Stargazing Live’ earlier in the week has rekindled that latent interest.
Following on from this the local Eddington Astronomical Society in held an evening talk on Friday 20th which I attended with my son. This was a very informative evening, where we learned about our solar system, and where we are in located in the Universe. The speaker Stuart Atkinson who is secretary of the society took things from the start assuming that we knew nothing about the solar system, without being patronising.
We learned about how stars are formed and the different galaxy’s that are out there in the night sky. We were shown actual pictures of the planets alongside computerised imagery of what the surfaces of the large gas planets of Saturn and Jupiter might look like. The actual pictures of the surface of Mars were amazing.
Stuart who is probably the foremost name in the study of Mars within the UK, has visited NASA which is by invitation only and had his picture taken next to the latest Mars rover ‘Curiosity’ (which is nuclear powered instead of solar powered like the ones that are there at the moment). The Mars spacecraft that wil take this rover to Mars was launched in 2011 and is expected to arrive on Mars during August 2012.

Tying Night

I didn’t manage to get to the first tying night run by the Lakeland Fly Dressers due to work commitments. I did get along to the second night on Wednesday 11th Jan. We were tying Loch Style Wets. The actual fly’s we were tying were the Red Ribbed Mayfly and Dark Olive Dabbler.
My attempt at the Red Ribbed Mayfly was going well, I finished the head then the copper wire snapped at the butt and unwound the palmering which until that point was looking good. I had more success with the second fly, the Olive Dabbler. The hardest part of this fly was tying in the wing. I was feeling pleased with the result. On showing this to the instructor he said he was impressed with my wing.
This has spurred me on to get more tying done, especially dabblers and the like as there are many stillwaters around here to give them a swim and hopefully catch a couple of fish.

Trout & Salmon Dec 2012

I have just been re-reading the December issue of this magazine, especially the feature in it called ‘Trout in the Lakes’. The feature is on the River Kent, my local, but about a stretch of the river that I have not visited (for fishing) in the past. The section runs from Burneside to Staveley. This is a beautiful stretch of river and Burneside Anglers have approximately 6 miles of double bank with some very hard fighting wild brownies with a good run of Sea trout and Salmon especially in the autumn.
Having read the feature I went out for a walk along this stretch today to see for myself the pools, glides and riffles as described in it. I must say that the river is as good if not better than the feature suggests. This is definitely on my to do list for next season.