Stargazing Live - Ipswich, Suffolk

[rocketandroll]

Hi folks

I don't think anyone else local has mentioned it so thought I'd put up details of our local SGL event. Orwell Astronomical Society Ipswich (OASI) are holding a public stargazing event in Christchurch park, Ipswich (on the field immediately adjacent the 'Reg Driver visitors centre') on the evening of Monday 16th January.

The gates open to the public at 6:00pm and close at 9:00pm.

It looks like I've managed to blag some PR for this in the local press, look for a small story (possibly using one of my deep sky images) in the East Anglian Daily Times on Saturday.

Link to the event details on the BBC site is here:

BBC - Things To Do: Star Party

The OASI website (with contact details) are here:

OASI - Introduction

Thanks all... and good luck to everyone with their local events, lets hope it's as good as last year was for getting new people in... I know it worked on me :-)

Ben

[Craig20264]

I was wondering if anything was happening locally, will definately pop down, thanks for the heads up.

[Disco]

See you there guys

[gthomas]

I don't ever remember that being a particularly dark site. ;-)

[rocketandroll]

I don't ever remember that being a particularly dark site. ;-)

It's not.... but I think the key is getting people along... and a park in the middle of town is a teensy bit more likely to get them to do that than a murky farm field in the middle of nowhere :-)

I did some imaging from one of the parks at one of these events last year and with an LP filter it's actually not that bad at all.

Ben

[rocketandroll]

Oh, quick additional request.... just in case...

If anyone is attending and happens to have a spare power-pack or some power source with a 12V lighter socket on it that I may be able to borrow for the evening... that'd be awesomely useful!

My old pack died in an accident a while back and although I have a new one it's cheap and probably won't run my whole rig, plus my laptop, for three hours.

Cheers all

Ben

[rocketandroll]

Right... I'm off to collect my gear and start setting up... see everyone soon!

Ben

[rocketandroll]

A massive thankyou to everyone who turned up... all I can say is... WOW!! What a night!!!

Someone told me we had over 300 people attend the event, ques of 30 - 40 people at a time to look through each of the 8 or so telescopes that were set up.

We couldn't have picked a better night for it... clear and crisp throughout...

Only slight down was that I managed to run my car battery flat running my laptop off it for an hour resulting in Neil, the club chairman, having to jump start me to get me out of the park again :-) Despite that, and spending most of my time answering questions and showing off previous images on the laptop my guiding stayed flat as a pancake all night (except one sub ruined by an astronomer (not a member of the public) trying to look at my scope during a sub and kicking one of the tripod legs. I have about two and a half hours of subs on the Rosette to show for it... which are stacking now.

Great evening, and hopeful the club will get a LOT of new members from it.

Ben

[Disco]

Good to meet up with you Ben, I hope you didnt get too many people standing in front of the scope

Disco