Star performer

Life rushes on and the weekend's experiences already seem weeks ago.  I have more to say about Poznan, but for now I'm going to talk about going to Five Rivers tonight.

I'd forgotten it was the Annual Meeting this evening (well, I'd written it in the wrong box on the calendar, in fact).  So it was a good job I ran into the Friends' administrator earlier today, who set me straight.

The speaker tonight was Alan French, an amateur astronomer.  Now, I know that everyone should spend good portions of their time looking at the night sky in order to keep the problems of the world in perspective etc etc.  However, I can't say I do, and I've never been as interested as I feel I ought to be in constellations and the like (how can you possibly say that such and such a grouping of shiny dots in the sky looks like a man or a bear or whatever?).

I didn't, therefore, have very high hopes of enjoying a talk about astronomy.  How wrong I was!  Mr French gave an excellent presentation, covering all the basic information a person might need to get into space (not literally).  Best planispheres (star maps) and sky calendar, best websites and apps. If you are at all interested, let me know and I'll pass on the details.  Special mention goes to a fun sounding website called www.heavens-above.com which lets you know when satellites and other cool stuff in the sky will be passing over your house.  No telescope?  No problem - find your nearest local amateur astronomy group (for us it's Albany Area AAs) and they'll very likely invite you to a star party where you can try out OPTs (Other People's Telescopes).