Weekend weather fails to dampen Astronomy weekend or people's enthusiasm.
What a relief that the wild weather at the weekend didn't spoil the launch of a new weekend break to our range. Despite the weather we had a great group of customers learn about Astronomy over a weekend that included a visit to the Derby and District Astronomical Society's local Flamsteed Observatory.
The launch was intended to celebrated the International Year of Astronomy with an “Astronomy for Enthusiastic Beginners” weekend. The event proved such a success with our customers and good experience of working with a local society that we will be running more Astronomy dates and developing additional Astronomy experiences.
We had teamed up with the Society to pilot the weekend course as a way of introducing people to Astronomy, to contribute towards the objectives of the International Year of Astronomy, and to develop our concept of leisurely learning for adults. The course, which was fully booked, was a combination of tuition and practical observation. Expert Mark Whitehouse explained how to find and identify different planets, described which constellations could be seen in the night sky and customers were shown how to use different telescopes.
It was a pleasure working with Derby and District Astronomical Society to visit their Observatory which added that “extra special bit of interest” for our customers. Everybody appreciated the efforts of Society members, Anthony Southwell and Mike Lancaster for turning out in such mucky weather to open up and give a talk about the observatory. Their friendly approach to Astronomy nurtured peoples interest
Observation time was subject to weather conditions but we resorted to a contingency plan of projecting a planetarium on to an indoor wall which entertained customers on Friday evening. The wind and rain made it touch-and-go on Saturday and we were all disappointed that cloud cover prevented seeing anything from the Flamsteed Observatory. However Mark and I were relieved when we got back to our venue at Windlehill Farm to find the skies had cleared enough to get some great views of Jupiter with it moons, numerous constellations including Pegasus and Orion.
We had an encouraging level of interest and understand there are not many courses like this in the UK so we will be adding more to our Programme.
