I attended the latest Sky-Watch evening of the Eddington Astronomical Society last night along with my son; this was mainly a Moon watch. The Idea behind these evenings is to get the local community interested in Astronomy even if it just the basics of looking at the moon and one or two of the other planets and some of the more recognisable stars.
Having recently acquired a pair of 10x50 binoculars, I took them along to the evening. We arrived at about 7.15pm at the Brewery Arts Centre where the event was being held. I used my Binoculars at first to have a look at the Constellation of Orion, looking at Betelgeuse, Bellatrix & Rigel, three of the most prominent stars of the constellation followed by Orion’s belt the diagonal line of 3 stars. Just below this is Orion’s Sword. Usually you can only make out one or two stars with the naked eye, but using the binos you could actually make out the middle star – this is actually a gas cloud nebula where new stars are forming.
My son first looked at Jupiter through one of the telescopes and was amazed when he could see 4 of Jupiter’s moons as well as the bands of cloud that make up the planet. Next he had a look at the Moon through another telescope and was blown away with the views of craters and how clear they were, also the close up of a section of it where the craters were even more noticeable and clear.
A very good night and well worth going to, I will be going to more as the year goes on and so will my son as he has taken an active interest in astronomy.
Posts
