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

Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein.  We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows.  It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland,  it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers!  The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout.   It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers....  The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...
Post a Comment
Read more

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town.  Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now.  The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art....  Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...
2 comments
Read more

verdant lushness

Its a never ending island hop... today we hopped of the boat at Kingstown, on the island St. Vincents and Grenadine. Once through the usual port duty free - cheap booze and diamonds to go milarkey we were straight into the town... crazy noisy smelly chaos... refreshingly no tat shops for tourists, just local markets and street traders all vying for local sales.  Music blasting from everywhere, cars (very battered and often very pimped) all over the roads - parked in the middle of the street, loading, unloading, chatting seemingly oblivious to the total traffic jam caused behind them...  We walked through this mayhem - the temperatures were rising probably about 30 degrees - tourists evident by trying to walk on the shady side of the street - even when we turned off the main drag and there were less people it was still like carnival time with music blasting everywhere. Its very atmospheric and mostly promotes a good vibe although I have heard '3 little birds' everywhich way a...
1 comment
Read more