Skip to main content

Four planets and a lot of stars - to say nothing of cake

Just back from an excellent weekend away in Ninebanks Youth Hostel helping to deliver an astronomy weekend.   Basically Dr Fred delivers the technical stuff - understandable lectures and stunning slides on whatever topic astronomical agreed - this time lots of interesting information about planets and gravitational waves.... and I do the catering for the friends and visitors we have attending the weekend event.   We hire the youth hostel - which I have to say one of the best located, friendliest and nicest hostels I've ever stayed in - so we have exclusive use and on this instance we had 14 interested person come along and enjoy an informative and fun long weekend.  Although the weather was kind to us the skies did not clear for either Friday or Saturday evening so it was a good job most people stayed for the Sunday night when after a glorious sunny day everyone was able to stay out observing Jupiter and some of its moons, Mars rising followed swiftly by Saturn and its rings.   Fired up by a Sunday dinner and lots of cake people were able to stay put to the early hours of the morning and make up for the lost previous evenings.

The added bonus for this weekend was the opportunity to observe the transit of Mercury on the Monday... unfortunately for me I had to whizz off back into the real world and go to college where I continue to explore options on circles spots and all things moths...

detail of detail moth wing.. wool embroidery on calico



The weekend wasn't all hard work astronomy and cooking...there was plenty of opportunity to explore the local area.  Dr Fred and I had a wander down to Lambley Viaduct - a very pleasant walk down the disused railway line across the top of the viaduct and then down the steps into the valley to view the extremely magnificent piece of architecture from below... Dr Fred has a mind to climb it at some point but I just enjoyed the river and the woods surrounding it.

If you want more detail about joining our astronomy weekends contact Dr Fred on yuricosmos@gmail.com all welcome and all levels of knowledge and curiosity catered for (plus wholesome food and yummy cakes)



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...
1 comment
Read more

Autumnal Garden Days

I love these (rare) warm sunny late summer days and there is all sorts of lovely things  going on in my garden... I counted 12 red admiral butterflies whizzing around the over grown ivy which I had been about to hack down but then left until the flutterbies have finished with it... The late blooms add a dash of colour and the daisy strewn lawn is littered with autumnal leaves, debris from my brief half an hour of slash and burn and the stone wall is covered in glorious soft moss all shiny and tactile with a few late nasturtiums loitering. I've hacked out the brambles for this year, sadly I missed the fruit as we were away, ditto the strawberries, we never seem to get the fruit before the birds so I've made space and moved the plants that were getting swamped and so not performing to their potential - hopefully next year they will literally blossom now they have light and room to flourish.
Post a Comment
Read more

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished...  it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh...  I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic!  there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....
Post a Comment
Read more