Sacred Heart Astro-night.
After the society received written requests from over 20 pupils asking if anyone from the society could visit the school to talk to them and show them some equipment, Keith and Brian put together a superb presentation aimed at introducing the subject of Astronomy to both pupils and parents and answering the many questions raised by the pupils in their letters.
As well as a presentation, two 8” Newtonian telescopes were set up outside as well as a set of binoculars for everyone to sample the delights on offer that evening. Pupils, Parents and teachers were all treated to views of the moon, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars as they had never seen before. The Orion Nebula was also observed by a couple of pupils just before we packed up.
There were about 45 people who attended and feedback from the event has been fantastic. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the evening. There have been so many positive comments from pupils, parents and staff at the school with many asking “When’s the next one?” before it had even finished! We were mentioned in the schools news letter and the school has asked me to pass on their thanks again to Keith & Brian.
I have included some pictures from the 130+ taken on the evening.

Brilliant - thanks to everyone involved. Keith and Brian are a great double act for schools.
We could do with a write-up and a selection of the pics for the newsletter if someone can forward them to Len please.
Again - well done!

Yes indeed, and I know that Mukesh and Gary are planning a session at Sharples in September for local primary school pupils, and would be interested in any other suggestions of astro-themed activities to show them through the day. We've already thought of solar and lunar viewing, simple spectroscopes, building and testing a simple "Gallilean" refractor, and receiving weather pictures from satellites - but if you have any other ideas, please share them here.

This open-day will probably have an associated evening star-party, and by then their GCSE Astronomy course will be running too, so I'm sure that we can look forward to many more collaborative events over the darker months.

Hi Ross

How about running something like Stellarium connected to a projector and perhaps get it linked to a GOTO?

Bill