Stars in our eyes!
This month saw our first astronomy event. For the best part of the week prior I had been praying for clear skies, so I was very pleased at being rewarded with a glorious clear sky on the night, particularly as the event was sold out! Two extremely experienced astronomers kindly agreed to lead the event – Ian Sharp, who specialises in photographing the night sky and deep space; and Pete Lawrence, presenter of the BBC’s The Sky at Night.
We spent the first part of the evening by the harbours edge, utilising the dark skies and open horizons. Using a laser pen Ian and Pete helped us locate a point of reference, such as an easy to recognise constellation like The Plough. From there they would then teach us to navigate using it’s form to other star groups – from the Plough to the Pole Star or Polaris, which is part of Ursa Minor or Little Bear, and then onto the ‘W’ of Cassiopeia. In this way we soon found ourselves successfully star-hopping around the night sky.
Without the light pollution associated with our towns, the Milky Way stretched out beautifully above our heads and we were introduced to Cygnus, the Swan - quite apt for the RSPB and far more swan-like than Pegasus was horse-like!
The Milky Way - Aquila / Scutum. Photo: Ian Sharp
As we were introduced to the different constellations Pete and Ian would fascinate us further with snippets of facts and stories about them, such as the Seven Sisters or Pleiades – this is an open cluster of approximately a thousand ‘relatively young’ stars, but only six can be seen with the naked eye. In Greek mythology the Pleiads were seven daughters of Atlas, who held up the sky. We were even lucky enough to see the International Space Station pass over us and a couple of shooting stars (I should say meteors) streaked across the sky as if our astro-guides had planned it!
Just as we were starting to feel the cold, we headed back to the Centre for hot drinks and a chance to look at deep-space objects through quality telescopes.
Milky Way - Cygnus, North America Nebula. Photo: Ian Sharp
A fantastic evening that has had me walking into lampposts ever since, as I'm now forever looking up!