Saturday 10th July

Farnham Astronomical Society was well represented at Fleet carnival on this blisteringly hot Saturday afternoon. We had several scopes on show and plenty of members images on our growing collection of display boards.  There was a steady flow of visitors and once the carnival procession arrived we were swamped with interested visitors both old and young. The society’s gazebo was a very welcome refuge from the Sun for visitors and the FAS team alike.

Some of our younger visitors were very taken with Kevin’s complete set of inflatable planets. After some debate about dwarf planets, Pluto was not put on display and had to be let down gently!

However, some of us want Pluto reinstated and are even wondering when Kevin is going to add inflatable moons, especially for Jupiter which is obviously missing it’s 63 companions! There was also speculation about an inflatable asteroid belt, comets and maybe a few thousand inflatable satellites around Earth…….someone’s going to be out of breath if we get them all :-) Jokes were also made about the re-creation of the inflationary period of the early universe, and the risk of a big bang!

This was also a chance to take our PST out on the road and meet the public on its first outreach event. We were lucky with the clouds and the PST was in almost constant use, although later in the day the polar alignment and setting Sun meant we had to kneel down to get to the eyepiece!

The Sun remains relatively quiet but we were able to show visitors to the carnival the solar disk and a prominance that appeared to be a loop of plasma projected from the solar limb. This larger than Earth-sized structure has already been nicknamed the “Fleet Prom.” 

Sunday 11th July

We were back at Fleet on Sunday to meet visitors to the dog and car show and were providing our audience with a great alternative to the Silverstone Grand Prix and the build up to the World Cup final!  The dog show (organised by Kelly’s Canines) and the car show at The Views brought a different, but no less family-oriented audience.  By noon we had signed up several new members.

There was a steady stream of interested folk and despite the odd large cloud there was much interest in the PST - which was very gratifying.

Kevin’s “Ask an Astronomer” challenge evoked a wide range of questions from the basic “If the Earth is spinning, why aren’t the stars and planets zipping past?” through the commonplace “What happened before the Big Bang?”, and “What is the Universe Expanding into?” to the somewhat challenging ”Can you explain quantum theory in layman’s terms?”. Answering each of these was “fun”.

Was it worthwhile for the Society?

Definitely!

The event has taken a lot of planning, preparation and hard work, but as usual it was great fun to be out there talking to the public about astronomy. We met all of our objectives – to raise awareness of the society; to sign up some new members, and of course to increase the public’s appreciation and understanding of astronomy – which is one of the goals of the society.  We also have many promises from potential new members who may come along to future meetings. If there is one important lesson for the society, it is that the public just do not know that we are ‘in town’ and so raising awareness and good publicity for the society is vital.

Also, we raised more money for the Carnival on the Saturday than any other exhibitor.

Acknowledgements

 Thanks to all of those involved for their hard work and contributions including:

• Danny Thomas
• Kevin Pretorius
• John Price
• John Rees
• John Moore
• Maurice Kent
• Peter Campbell-Burns
• Richard Kacerek
• Katherine Rusbridge

Our thanks also to Scopes’n'Skies for supporting us with their contribution to the PST.

We had been allocated space for our display at the entrance of the main Marquee.    We had plenty of space to  show show off  the work of our members including our ever-popular collection of images.   With space on the display board being limited we prepared two display folders which we left out on a table; one of these contained a collection of information on light pollution and  the other contained a brief history of the Aldershot Observatory with photographs.  

This event was our first opportunity to use our new  Personal Solar Telescope (PST) at an outreach event but unfortunately the PST is proving itself to be a very effective cloud magnet and we were dogged by cloud cover for the whole afternoon.  Every now and then a bit of blue sky would appear – often referred to as a “sucker hole” - at the sight of which Danny would pick up the PST and rush outside only to return minutes later.  To be fair, we did see a Solar prominence or two.

There was a surprising amount of interest in the Aldershot Observatory display folder.   Having driven past the building on frequent occasions many visitors recognised the picture of the observatory on the cover of our folder and all expressed surprise that it was a working observatory and not just a relic.  The Aldershot Display folder proved a very valuable way of getting people to stop and talk to us.   At least three people we spoke to owned a telescope of some sort and wanted some help with it – one of these was the owner of a (quote) “large Meade with a computer”.  A lesson we can take from this for future events is to advertise our willingness to help people who own telescopes.

As always, member’s images proved to be very popular indeed.

By the end of the afternoon Kevin’s voice was getting hoarse after talking to many visitors.   This is always a good sign.

Our thanks to Danny Thomas and Adam Thomas, Kevin Pretorius and Peter Campbell-burns for setting up the display and being there for the afternoon, and to Chris Thayer for liaising with the organisers and ensuring us a prominent space in the Marquee. 

Some pictures of the event are below.  Click on an image to see an enlargement.

Society member Eric Grieve opened up the dome to the afternoon sunshine and talked through the operation of the telescope with members and their guests.

The telescope was positioned to project the Sun safely onto a sheet of cupboard.

Considering the age of the optics, the image of the Sun was relatively clear but there were no sun spots to enjoy!

Despite the fact that the telescope is over 100 years old, the clockwork drive was still able to track the movement of the Sun across the afternoon sky.

Thanks to Adam Thomas for taking the photographs.

Unfortunately, the very night we turned up with our telescopes coincided with the end of the run of superb weather and there was a layer of cloud.  All was not lost however as the moon was bright enough and high enough to punch its way through so we were able to show the children something.  We had a small array of telescopes from John’s 10″ LX200 down to a couple of Williams Optics SD66s – and binoculars as well. 

Despite the cloud there were enough ooohs and aaahs to make it worthwhile despite the weathter.

Our thanks to all who attended:

• Peter Campbell-Burns (WO SD66, 20×100 binoculars and 15×70 Binoculars)
• Kevin Pretorius (Meade 8″ S/N on an LDX 55 mount)
• John Moore (Pentax 105SDHF)
• John Price (10″ LX200)
• Danny and Adam Thomas (ETX 125 and WO SD66)
• Peter West (Tal 3.5″ reflector)

It is hard to beat the thrill of launching a new web site – yes, it really its as exciting as your first sight of the rings of Saturn or capturing your CCD image of a first spiral galaxy.   We want this site to become an interactive online newsletter which reflects fully the interests and activities of our Members.  This new site, coupled with quality content, gives us the means to reach out to, engage with and inform the wider Astronony community – worldwide!

We have kept the Farnham Astronomical Society ‘branding’ – our now familiar colour scheme and banner, but this is where the similarities between the new site and and the old end.  We can now offer a state of the art publishing platform which offers visitors to our site many more useful features:

• Content can be posted much more quickly and easily making our site look less like a brochure with static and outdated content;
• There are now many more ways to find content on our site:
  • Items can be searched for using  a Google-style search box
  • Items can be searched for by selecting a category (e.g. Events) or a keyword from the tag list,
  • Items can be listed according to criteria such as most visited or most commented,
  • Articles can be displayed according to the month published,
  • A list of articles on related topics is displayed whenever an article is displayed;
• Members can more easily keep informed of members activity by subscribing to our RSS feed;
• We also present latest news from external astronomy sites such as Astronomy Now and APOD;
• The site has better search engine optimisation – in other words the site is more search engine friendly.  It will be easier to find content on our site using search engines such as Google and our content willrank more highly in search engine listings;
• The now site supports tagging of content; this isis now an important component of the online publishing process; it allows editors to build associations and search keywords through which which any type of content can be found;
• Website visitors can leave comments on articles and images posted to the site (comments will be fully moderated).

It is mobile device friendly too!

The really technical stuff

This site is uses WordPress, an open source publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.  See http://wordpress.org/.  I can also throw in buzzwords like PHP and MySql – but I’ll spare you the details.

Acknowledgements

Farnham Astronomical Society wishes to extend its gratitude to Richard Kacerek of  EmpireElements Limited, professional web designers for developing and hosting this leading edge web site for the Society.

The event was well attended by members (we mustered about ten telescopes) and by the public.  Visitors numbered in their hundreds.  It was a very successful day.  As a result we recruited several new members – luckily one of them was the designer of our new web site!  We were also rewarded with an excellent write up in the local newspapers.

 The Farnham Astronomical Society set up a stand at the Herstomceux Astronomy Festival in September 2006 along with other several local societies.  The stand was manned by Peter Campbell-Burns and Barry Bellinger.

Barry manning the stand (can you see the strings?)

Cloud cover the whole weekend

Wouldn’t you love that in the back garden

Best keep a low profile!

Barry Bellinger is banged to rights!

Ready for action

 

Farnham Astronomical Society and Guildford Astronomical Society set up a solar observing display in the village of Frensham just to the South of Farnham.  The children’s carnival had a space theme.  Chris Thayer took some pictures.

Inside the display tent

Gathering around the scopes

Frensham is well known for its Aliens

Solar observing with a PST

The Ood at Frensham Fayre

Space Ship

Gone for lunch?

Our thanks to John Axtell for remembering to bring his camera.

 Click on an image to expand