SkyNews - how things can snowball!!

[Stu]

Dinesh has already posted about this feature which was filmed at our club (Walton Astro Group) on Tuesday.

http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php?/topic/250850-Sky-News-special-on-astronomy-equipment---tonight-at-9%2E30pm-21%2E8%2E15

I thought I would give a little background on how this came about. It all happened very quickly and from a seemingly unlikely start.

The whole thing was unwittingly initiated by Craig (actually Cosmic Donkey on SGL), a very capable imager in my local group who posted a little piece on a Facebook group for East And West Molesey.

Pretty soon afterwards he was contacted by a local estate agency asking him to write a blog piece on his imaging.

http://newtonhuxley.co.uk/post/west-molesey-resident-captures-amazing-photographs-of-deep-space

This then got picked up by the Surrey Comet....

http://m.surreycomet...om_back_garden/

Which pretty quickly got picked up and run by the Express online.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/597829/Stunning-photos-galaxy-taken-car-mechanic-back-garden

Soon afterwards, our club secretary called me (as chairman of our club of all of around 15 active members!!) to say SkyNews wanted to record a piece on Tuesday 18th at a club meeting (we don't meet on Tuesday's!), focusing on technology, apps and telescopes! I was away on holiday unfortunately but the chaps worked really hard to pull an excellent session together. There was far more there than actually made it into the final programme which is frustrating, but I'm delighted with what the guys pulled off at short notice.

http://news.sky.com/story/1539647/the-apps-and-gadgets-for-stargazers

It's a crazy old world. Craig is an excellent narrowband imager, but just using fairly standard kit under pretty challenging conditions of LP. There are plenty of people doing the same or better. There are also so many larger, more established clubs out there, but because a researcher picked up this story, we got the attention.

I guess the thing to note is that local reporters do watch local community FB groups (but not Astro groups). If they happen to be looking for a story when you post some info or images up then it may get picked up.

As an amusing finale, the two Sky Reporters managed to hide in the car park and get locked in when our secretary left. They were stuck in there until I managed to find the code for the padlock somewhere in my emails!! . Again this was picked up via Twitter and reported on. Scary how these things work.

http://m.surreycomet.co.uk/news/13613964.Sky_News_team_trapped_in_Esher_Rugby_Club_after_stargazing/

As ever with TV, a large amount of smoke and mirrors were involved. It was cloudy, so not a star was seen all evening, and yes, Dinesh was well aware that Jupiter was below the horizon when he slewed to it

Here are some photos from the evening. As said, I wasn't there so a big thank you and well done chaps for putting on a great show for the Walton Astro Group

[xtreemchaos]

well done chaps you all did fantastic, you are a credt to our cause.clear skys charl

[ChrisLX200]

Looks like the Sky team brought their own light pollution with them :-)

ChrisH

[estwing]

yes Chris some of the photo's do look funny....

[Stu]

Looks like the Sky team brought their own light pollution with them :-)

ChrisH

Yes, we normally have to wait for the rugby club to turn the floodlights off on the training pitch!

[Moonshane]

I had my few minutes of fame when I was the local moth recorder. I got a call at lunch time and without a clue what they were going to ask me agreed to bring in some moths and talk with them the following day.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi9Q_lSS9-g

It's a nice experience and something you'll always remember :0)

[Stu]

Nice one Shane

What noises do moths make, do you need really tiny microphones..... Or am I missing the point?

[mcolbert]

Shane's talking about the Tiger variety, so ordinary mics are fine.

[FenlandPaul]

Absolutely fantastic!