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April 16 2010
International Year of Astronomy - PUBLIC VIEWING EVENT.
The club held a public observing event on the night of the 16th for the
public to see the Moon and planets,
We got a big crowd and will be doing this again.
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May 9 2010
CATDIG PUBLIC PRESENTATION.
The club was invited along to the Saber Studio in Limerick to give a general
talk on Astronomy, Dave and Gordon attended and gave
an hour long talk on the
solarsystem using Starrynight. The invitation was by the Catherine Street
Culteral Dig (CATDIG) and was run
in conjunction with the ev+a art exhibition.
The event was well atteneded (30+) and many questions were ask by the audience,
some
of which provoked some long discussions. Its something we hope to do again
in the not to distant future.
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May 16 2010
GLOBAL ASTRONOMY MONTH - PUBLIC VIEWING EVENT.
On the 16th of May SAC ran a very succesful public observing event as part
of
Global Astronomy Month, our observing director Dave reports:
Well guys'n gals,
All I can say is WOW, what a night!
We had prestine clear skies here in Limerick, some people asked if the volcanic
dust from the Icelandic volcano would be a
problem when infact it has actually
helped us due to the complete absence of any contrails in the sky, and not a
cloud in sight.!!
Over the entire night we must have had over 150 people come along to the event
with well over 100 there at one stage!!!
This was an amazing turn out and shows what some proper advertising can do for
us.
We started out at 8.30 and everyone there had views of the thin cresent Moon
through the clubs 12" Dob and Venus through
clubs 10" Meade SCT. The views were steady and everyone was happy.
Later on as the Moon set, we set the 2 telescopes on Saturn and again everyone
got fantastic views of Saturn and its
moons Titan, Tethys and Rhea, the rings
were very nice also.
Later we swung the scopes over to Mars and despite its small size and it been
past its best, everyone got enjoyable view of it.
Some people brought along their own scopes and we helped them in setting them up
and how to use them.
By 11.30 people were starting to melt away and we finished up at midnight.
Our riverside location with the newly refurbished riverside walkway with
seating, railings and bins is definitely working to our
advantage despite the
lighting and a few trees.
everyone attending got a great views of the planets and Moon, its an
event we're definitely going to run again!
Many thanks to all in SAC who made this event possible!
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May 23 2010
BIODIVERSITY DAY - PUBLIC VIEWING EVENT.
The club a public starwatch event at Lees road in Ennis as part of BioDiversity
day. Clare county council through Shane Casey
(BioDiversity Officer) invited the
club along to do the viewing event. We attended at 10pm and showed a crowd over
over 60 people
the Moon and Planets through various telescopes. We also handed
out starcharts and gave a 15 minute run down on the constellations,
where they
are and explaining their significance. We had a perfectly clear sky and the
night was enjoyed by all, we finished up at midnight.
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July 2 2010
SAC committee member John
O"Mahony leaves for Australia.
A number of us went and had a few pints with our good friend, John O'Mahony as
he is leaving our shores for better skies in Australia.
John was a valuable member of our committee and was always a a level head under
pressure.
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September 11 2010
BURREN STARPARTY.
The club ran the Burren starparty at Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare. The speakers were
very entertaining and informative.
The weather also co-operated and the observing session on the Saturday night ran
as planned.
Robin Scagill wrote up a nice artivle about it in the november issue of
"Astronomy Now", and in the
Society
for Popular Astronomy's website.
The Clare Champion newspaper also wrote up and article on it in their weekend
issue.
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September 18 2010
iNTERNATION OBSERVE THE MOON
NIGHT - PUBLIC VIEWING EVENT
The club organised a public observing session on O'Callaghans strand for this
event in association with other clubs in IFAS and
around the world. However the
weather didnt co-operate and was abandoned at 9pm due to cloud cover.
We will endevaour to try and run this night again in the not too distant
future.
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October 6 2010
GUEST SPEAKER - John Flannery
(South Dublin Astronomical Society).
Many thanks to John for coming down to us here in Limerick and giving us a talk
on the history of starmaps over the past
500 years, it was very informative and we look forward to having John with us
again.
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November 11 2010
2010 SCIENCE WEEK, Limerick
Institute of Technology presentation.
As part of 2010 science
week, the club held a public talk at Limerick
Institute of Technology .
The talk is titled "A tour of the solarsystem" and was presented by
Gordon Lawlor.
We had hoped to have a viewing session and show people Jupiter and the moon, but
bad weather prevented it.
Gordons talk was well recieved with over 40 people attending.
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December 21 2010
Total Lunar Eclipse
The club went ahead with a
viewing session for this winters equinox lunar eclipse as the weather was looking
someway good. We first went
up to our observing site in Boher but the site was
covered in fog so we went to the hills around Keeper hill, 15 miles or so north
east of Limerick. These hills were well above all the fog in the area
thankfully. We got there about 1/3rd of the way into the eclispe and the
temperature was
reading at -12 celsius as we were in the middle of the winter
cold spell.
The following 4 images were taken by Dave Lillis between 7.26 and 7.55 am GMT.
The following 3 images were
taken by Frank Ryan in the same timespan.
The 5 brave souls who bared the
-16 degree cold were (left to right) Frank Ryan,Tom Walsh, Roy Stewart, Dave Lillis
and Conan McDonnell. We had several scopes there including a 9.25"
celestron SCT. We lost the moon as it enterd a horizon band of cloud at
around 8am, this shot was taken a few minutes afterwards, with our backs towards the
winter equinox sunrise.
Roll on the next lunar eclipse.
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