Hi everyone,
Good morning and hope the recent snow wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. I was coming back from down the country late on Saturday night and at one stage I appeared to be the ONLY car on the M50 — now that’s a rarity!!! Linking motorway designations and astronomy, the open star cluster M50 is the sole entry in Messier’s catalog (http://seds.org/messier/index.html ) that lies in the winter constellation Monoceros. The Milky Way winds a path across the stellar landscape here and many celestial showpieces mark various junctions. Even a pair of binoculars will show some lovely star groups in the Unicorn, a swathe of sky often overlooked for the brighter luminaries of nearby Orion.
Thanks to everyone who got in touch about the books, etc. I’m stepping back a bit from everything to resume my college degree course at night which I had deferred for a year. I do hope to be able to do more after the summer. To be absolutely honest though, I had also reached complete burn-out and was just not enjoying the hobby of astronomy for the last couple of years what with being involved in the committee side of not just the SDAS but other clubs too.
January meeting
Because of the schools closure and the fact they are only resuming this week we have moved our January meeting to Thursday, February 4th in Gonzaga College in Ranelagh. I will send details out closer to the time about the evening’s programme.
ISS passes
The International Space Station is now making another set of excellent early evening passes over Ireland. It now often appears brighter than Jupiter, so you can’t miss it if it’s passing over in a clear sky. Full details for your location are on the free website www.heavens-above.com, along with other information such as Iridium flares, again specific to your own location.
Sky-guide
I believe the IAS Sky-High 2010 annual is now on sale but I did not see it on the shelves in Eason’s last weekend. Check out www.irishastrosoc.org for more details though.
Our own Sky-Guide 2010 is available from www.irishastronomy.org
Other events
NEXT IAA LECTURE, 13 January
The first of the Irish Astronomical Association’s public lectures of 2010 will be given by Dr Jorick Vink, of Armagh Observatory. His talk is entitled “The Most Massive Stars in The Universe”, and promises to be a fascinating subject. After all, the Sun is 328,935 times more massive than the Earth, and yet we know that there are stars maybe 50-60 times more massive than the Sun. But are there even more massive ones? And is there an upper limit? And how to these stellar heavyweights live their lives? Their lives seem to be relatively brief, but very spectacular!
It’s on WEDNESDAY 13 JANUARY, at 7.30 p.m., in the Bell Lecture Theatre, Physics Building, Queen’s University, Belfast. ADMISSION IS FREE, as always, and includes light refreshments. Everyone is welcome! Full details of the rest of the programme are on the website: www.irishastro.org
BT Young Scientist Exhibition
The annual BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS in Dublin runs this year from January 12th to 16th. The event is a brilliant showcase of all areas of the sciences in our secondary schools. Do try and get along during the days when the exhibition is open to the public. More details at http://www.btyoungscientist.ie/
