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| some people made their own version of Saturn V |
Dr Fred, myself, and our extended family and friends spent a wonderful weekend camping at the Girsby and Over Dinsdale Village hall. We were part of a team helping to run a festival to celebrate 50 years since the first man walked on the moon. The Festival was organised by the Go Stargazing team
https://gostargazing.co.uk/ check them out for future events.
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| the lull before the storm |
It was an action packed couple of days - after shopping for personal and cafe supplies we had to put up an enormous tent to house the Leeds tribe who came to help with refreshments. Then we had to arrange the Cafe At The End of the Universe to serve pop, crisps and hot dogs whilst running a crafting Giant Alien Robot building centre for the under 20's - We weren't strict about the age limit, and, in fact, found although the people involved in building Roobarb the Giant Alien Robot, and making pictures of aliens and rockets were averaging about 8 years in age, we did notice some sneaky potentially pensionable ages 30 upwards joining in the fun....
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| Roobarb the Giant Alien Robot - Note the Astronauts sat in chest cavity to give some idea of scale!! |
In the big hall, for those more seriously interested in the stories and science behind the celebrations, there was lots going on. An inflatable Planetarium showed Capcom Go! a film about the Moon Landing repeated through the day. A specially designated area allowed for a virtual reality headset, where you could have a turn at landing the lunar module. There were several talks throughout the weekend, given by different specialists in the field ranging from the obvious moon landing information , the technology involved, the highs, the lows, the befores and afters, to fascinating talks about Mars and quite a lot in between.
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inflatable planetarium
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Many people were very interested in the telescope information and surgery session - there were so many seasoned and knowledgeable astro geeks milling about to swap and share stories and information with - There were loads of up and coming astronomers running about from very small to getting almost big enough to see through the scopes without steps. Felicity the cat was there, selling her astronomy adventures in a lovely hardback book called A cats guide to the Night Sky by Stuart Atkinson.
https://stuartatkinson.wordpress.com/a-cats-guide-to-the-night-sky/Late afternoon saw the Battle of the Bottle Rockets... everyone put a lot of energy in to designing aerodynamic rockets under expert tuition from the lead Go Stargazing Commander and then came and pimped them in the craft area before going outside to see who's rocket would fly the highest and the furthest.
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| Bottle Rocket Launchpad |
The evening weather was perfect - we were able to stay out quite late observing, we had a fly past by the International Space station (twice as it happened) and a huge number of telescopes so everyone got a chance to look at various celestial beings. Meanwhile, back inside, the village hall once again rang out to tunes from Yuri Cosmos - space DJ extraordinaire!! Excellent time had by all.
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| yuri cosmos tunes |
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