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25 November 2011 (Friday) - Astro Club


The last Friday of the month – astro club. We got there early to set up, as threats of imminent baby was worrying the usual set-up stalwart. As always we weren’t sure how many chairs to put out. We set up for sixty five people, and ended up with standing room only.
The main talk of the evening was Stevey lecturing on extra-solar planets. A brilliant talk – really good. There was an interesting question after the talk in which one of the punters seemed not to believe in the principle of friction. I really don’t know how you should proceed when you explain a patently obvious scientific principle, only to be told “Well, I don’t believe it!
And then those of us with vested interests exploited our positions to extol the virtues of paintings and literature.

I hawked the raffle as always, and for once I actually won the constellation game myself. That tenner will come in handy. Meanwhile Steve hawked the recently obtained club clothing. We’ve got a range of T-shirts, hats and fleeces. We sold over three hundred quid’s worth this evening.
And then we did some stargazing. For all that I have a very good telescope (that wasn’t cheap), I rarely stargaze. Tonight was great – we looked at Jupiter and the Pleiades and Andromeda and all sorts of things. I even managed to get a photo of Jupiter and its moons with my camera.

Regular readers of this drivel might recall blog entries from four years ago when I was very sceptical about how the fledgling astro club was doing. In retrospect it would seem that I had nothing to worry about: the club’s turned out all right….

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