Space and Astronomy local festival

[ChrisLX200]

Our local annual festival (Barnaby fortnight) is running on a Space and Astronomy theme this year, which was great for stirring interest in all areas related to it. It's a very busy weekend with all sorts of events scattered around Macclesfield town centre, and not to be left out our Astronomy Society put on a display in the Town Hall. I was stood by my own astrophotography display for 4 hours until my back sadly gave up and I had to retire (I have a crushed lumbar disc which gives me pain if stood too long). I hope to continue tomorrow after giving it a rest :-) Later in the day at about 1:00pm there was a parade with a space theme, great to see kids with home-made cardboard telescopes and floats depicting the planets and all manner of related things like rocket ships and aliens!

I took some photos first thing before it got busy...

We _were_ going to have a live imaging session with time booked on telescopes located in Australia and Hawaii but would you believe it - both sites clouded/rained out today! Better luck next time :-)

There were meteorites and NASA Moon rocks on display:

Some astro-related pictures for sale:

Activities for kids and society displays:

My own astrophotography display (The Mayor came to visit and I took the opportunity to point out the importance of having dark skies and reducing light pollution in order to take pictures like these LOL!) :

and just a few pictures from the parade:

At least it didn't rain today!

ChrisH