Amateur Astronomy

John's shot of the moon from Selsey which nicely shows the Appenine mountain range

One of our other hobbies is Amateur Astronomy. We have some very good binoculars and a very basic telescope which will be replaced in due course with something better since the current scope is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. In April 2007, Keith & John had the honour and pleasure to be invited to Sir Patrick Moore's 50th Anniversary of the 'Sky at Night' party at Patrick's house in Selsey, near Chichester.

This was a superb day and evening with many amateur and professional astronomers being present including of course Patrick's great friend, Queen guitarist Dr Brian May and Patrick's co-presenter of the 'Sky at Night' Dr Chris Lintott.

The book, 'Bang' co-authored by Patrick, Chris and Brian is a must have and we were delighted to have this signed by all three authors in one evening.

In addition to using Patrick's 15" refractor in the garden, several other telescopes were set up to look at the moon and the planet Saturn which were in conjunction. John took the opportunity of taking several photographs of the moon on a simple digital camera looking through the lens of Keith Johnson's 9.25" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope one of which is here.

Based upon the day, John did a piece of work for his school Hazel Grove High School. We hope to visit Patrick at his wonderful house 'Farthings' again in 2009, a very special year for astronomy and space in general as the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing of Apollo 11.