Again I must apologise for the lack of blogging this past week. I have been on yet another vacation. This time to the lake district staying at the Graythwaite Estate.
Perfect weather, good seeing and dark skies gave a good clear view of the East-to-West skyline. The Milky way was a fantastic sight and the open clusters around the sword of Perseus, shown here as h+x were visible with binoculars.
The clear skies also gave a good sight of Andromeda (M31) which my wife found exciting as her first galaxy sighting. It is strange that she has never really taken any interest in astronomy until last weekend when a lack of light pollution really brought home to her the number of stars that can be seen with the naked eye. Even so, the concept of the milky way blew her mind. The fact that you can 'see' the spiral arm of our own galaxy matched against the thought that 31 is also a galaxy 'far, far away' made her feel a little small and inconsequential.
I think that astronomy can do this to you if you're coming at it from a non scientific point of view. The enormity of it all can really take your breath away. For me, that's the exciting aspect. The fact that there are billions of stars linked to billions of galaxies. The fact that the light that you are seeing can be thousands of years old.
I received my welcome pack from the British Astronomical Association on my return from vacation on Saturday. Given the fact that I have had only a cursory glance through the materials that have arrived, so far I am really impressed with both the level of detail and type of information included in the cost of approx' £40 per year. This seems to have been a good idea on my behalf (for a change) and hopefully means that I have access to a lot more experience in the shape of old hands and professionals who can help me through more advanced techniques for observing. If you haven't done so already I would recommend joining this community.
Well that's it for now. I hope that you are reading this with some interest. I would appreciate some feedback from you all, good, bad and indifferent so I can tailor the blog entries and to ensure that you have something interesting to read on an occasional basis.
0 comments:
Post a Comment