CADAS

Tony Morris will be leading this workshop on the basics of astrophotography on 16 November at Marston Magna Village Hall starting at 10 am.

The cost will be £10 for CADAS members and £15 for non- members.

Please bring your registration fee to the next CADAS meeting on Wednesday 18 September.

Contact CADAS for further details.

By general agreement Pete Ashtead’s talk on ‘X-planes and the space race’ was right up there with the best we’ve had. His presentation kept us riveted throughout. Thanks Pete! A winner.

As it turns out we broke our attendance record at last night’s meeting with 50 people turning out for the treat. There was a great buzz at break time. We welcomed several visitors and four new members joined us.

Lot of us had observed a good number of Perseids, including the group who met at our field on 13th.

We decided not to hire a coach for the trip to the Hubble exhibition due to the cost.

At next month’s meeting we will be taking the names of those interested in the basic DSLR imaging workshop we’re hoping to hold on 16 November in Marston Magna Village Hall. This will be led by Tony Morris from the BAA who has written a book on the subject. (We expect by then to be able to confirm the workshop) Cost will be £10 for members and £15 for non members. Numbers will be limited to 25. Please bring your payment to next month’s meeting.

Finally, thanks to Zena and helpers for refreshment, Bob and Arthur for their presentations and Bill for sharing his images of the Bubble nebula and especially the new supernova in Delphinus.
(Thanks too, to those who offered to hang on to those library books for me.)

Clear skies,
Ron

Harry Truman has acquired a stock of high quality binoculars and will be bringing some along to the next meeting on Wednesday 21 August. If you’re interested in acquiring some decent bins there will be bargains to be had!
Ron

Another good one! Welcome to the fold to our new members and to our visitors, hope you enjoyed the evening. The ‘Ask the experts’ session proved to be very useful especially to beginners but also to those of more experience. Amazing what hints and tips we all carry around that can be useful to others. This was a good opportunity to share these. Thanks to Arthur for his Sky Notes and Bob for his ‘Object of the month’. Thanks too to Bill for his images, especially that one of the Veil Nebula and Andromeda mosaic. The sun has been kind so I was able to show some solar images.

Next month’s ‘X-planes and the space race’ should be fascinating.

Weather permitting, our Perseid viewing evening will be on 12 August at the field in Hazelbury Plucknett. Get there around 9.30 or so. A map can be found elsewhere on this website. It can be surprisingly chilly, so warm stuff needed. Bring something comfortable to sit/lie on and a warm drink too.

If you haven’t put your name down for our planned trip to the ‘Visions of the Universe’ exhibition at the National Maritime Museum please contact me asap using the contact link on this website. So far it’s looking like either the 7th or 14th September. The cost will be £6.50 entrance plus whatever it will cost us to hire a minibus or similar.

Don’t forget the South West Astronomy Fair at the Norman Lockyer Observatory, Sidmouth on 10 August. Well worth a visit!

Nasa have just released their ‘pale blue dot’ shot of the earth taken by Cassini from behind Saturn. Beautiful! You can find it here-

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/23jul_palebluedot/

Ron

Great evening! We hope our visitors enjoyed themselves.

Many thanks to John Macdonald for his fascinating introduction to the world of sundials. We certainly discovered that there’s a whole lot more to using the sun to tell the time than it first appears. Congratulations to all who completed their models. It has to be said that Lorna’s was outstanding. Well done Lorna. For me, one highlight of the evening was seeing the dexterity with which Bill handled his scissors . His astro images of course, were also again outstanding. Is there no end to this man’s talents??

We’re hoping to organise a trip to the National Maritime Museum to take in the ‘Visions of Space’ exhibition which ends in early September. We will need to know the names of those interested by the next meeting but you can email me before then to register an interest.

Next month is our ‘Ask the experts’ evening. Do bring along any astronomical questions you might have. If you would like help with any of your kit, then bring it along too.

Finally, one of our members is selling an HEQ5 mount (without tripod) and a Starwatcher 8 in reflector. Please let me know if you might be interested.

Ron

Hello everyone,

Here are the materials to bring to our sundial talk and workshop at our June meeting on Wednesday 19th June.  If you can’t get hold of something just bring what you can as I’m sure we can share stuff. Should be good fun as well as being instructive. See you there.

The evening will consist of a short presentation on “How Sundials
Work” followed by a workshop where members/visitors can construct a
Diptych consisting two sundial faces (horizontal and vertical).

The equipment needed to draw out the sundial faces:
Pencil (plus sharpener if possible)
Ruler
Eraser
Protractor
Pair of compasses
A4 paper, at least two sheets

To construct the Diptych, people will need:
Cardboard from a cereal packet (or something similar)
Scissors
String, wool or thread to act as the gnomon and cast the shadow
Implement such as a paper clip that has been straightened to make
holes in the cardboard to thread the wool / string through
Pritt type glue
Sticky tape such as Cellotape
and for the deluxe version – a button, which the wool / string can
be threaded through.