Dr Fred and I held one of our star weekends this last weekend. Interestingly this was at a venue very near the 'Lost amongst the Stars' weekend we went to the week before but it was quite a different affair- no less enjoyable and equally great fun but definitely a different atmosphere and disappointingly not quite so much clear skies!!!
I didn't take any photos so here are are a few memorable slides from Dr Freds presentation... make what you will...
What makes it different is not so much the people and location, these weekends are largely based on listening to lectures from Dr Fred, so its much more educationally biased, but of course the participants only pretend to come for the knowledge sharing when really they know they are going to get fantastic grub!!!
We hired the Langdon Beck Youth hostel located just the other side of Middleton in Teesdale and very pleasant it was. Its a spacious building with plenty of bedrooms and a most fantastic view down the dale. Most importantly it had wonderful dark night skies free from light pollution - always supposing we don't get cloud cover!
As the glamorous assistant to Dr Fred I am responsible for producing sufficient hot tasty (nothing fancy) edible grub and cakes to keep 15 or so hungry star gazers stoked up for a chilly night of observing the skies. They are an easy lot to please and while Dr Fred delivers his talks about the never ending universe I beaver away in the kitchen making wholesome food. Its an enjoyable experience - despite having to get up ridiculously early to make breakfast - I'm sooo not a morning person!! These weekends attract a really interesting and diverse crowd who appreciate sensible cooking and interesting lectures from Dr Fred. We do a lot of learning, sharing information, chatting and very large amount of eating cake - all very good for the mind, body and soul.
Its kind of ironic that the light from the Andromeda Galaxy takes two and half million years to reach earth traveling through the emptiness of space and then within the last few hundred metres of its journey- which at the speed of light is a micro second - it all gets blocked by plain ordinary clouds!!!
This weekend we didn't get much in the way of clear skies, Friday night was a write off completely so as Saturday evening looked the same - drastic measures were called for - alarms were set and the star gazing started at 3.30 am for a couple of hours before the fog rolled back in and drove everyone back to warm beds until breakfast call at 8.30... people were a touch bleary eyed from the adventurous night time endeavours but it was wholeheartedly felt that it had been worth getting up for! Don't quite know how well everyone managed to concentrate on the mornings dark matter lecture - there was a lot of strong dark matter like coffee being absorbed!!!
I didn't take any photos so here are are a few memorable slides from Dr Freds presentation... make what you will...
What makes it different is not so much the people and location, these weekends are largely based on listening to lectures from Dr Fred, so its much more educationally biased, but of course the participants only pretend to come for the knowledge sharing when really they know they are going to get fantastic grub!!!
We hired the Langdon Beck Youth hostel located just the other side of Middleton in Teesdale and very pleasant it was. Its a spacious building with plenty of bedrooms and a most fantastic view down the dale. Most importantly it had wonderful dark night skies free from light pollution - always supposing we don't get cloud cover!
As the glamorous assistant to Dr Fred I am responsible for producing sufficient hot tasty (nothing fancy) edible grub and cakes to keep 15 or so hungry star gazers stoked up for a chilly night of observing the skies. They are an easy lot to please and while Dr Fred delivers his talks about the never ending universe I beaver away in the kitchen making wholesome food. Its an enjoyable experience - despite having to get up ridiculously early to make breakfast - I'm sooo not a morning person!! These weekends attract a really interesting and diverse crowd who appreciate sensible cooking and interesting lectures from Dr Fred. We do a lot of learning, sharing information, chatting and very large amount of eating cake - all very good for the mind, body and soul.
Its kind of ironic that the light from the Andromeda Galaxy takes two and half million years to reach earth traveling through the emptiness of space and then within the last few hundred metres of its journey- which at the speed of light is a micro second - it all gets blocked by plain ordinary clouds!!!
This weekend we didn't get much in the way of clear skies, Friday night was a write off completely so as Saturday evening looked the same - drastic measures were called for - alarms were set and the star gazing started at 3.30 am for a couple of hours before the fog rolled back in and drove everyone back to warm beds until breakfast call at 8.30... people were a touch bleary eyed from the adventurous night time endeavours but it was wholeheartedly felt that it had been worth getting up for! Don't quite know how well everyone managed to concentrate on the mornings dark matter lecture - there was a lot of strong dark matter like coffee being absorbed!!!
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