Thursday, November 10, 2005
Wednesday 2 Nov 05
Phone call from Amnesty international Limerick branch.
Shanonside Astronomy Club. 8pm Mary Immaculate College.
I got talking to one of the founding members of the club as I waited outside of the meeting to start (there was a board meeting going on inside). He explained that the club strted in 1985 after a astronomy classes given by a Ul Lecturer - the attendees of which decided to set up the club after the classes ended. They currently have articles in the Limerick leader with are focused at everybody rather than just the astronmically learned.
The club aims to encompass all levels of learning and interest in astronomy and is very open to new members. Indeed they were very friendly and only to delighted to give me information about themselves, at the end of the class many members stared behind to give advice to one new member on their new telescope. Their was 22 members at this meeting, men and women from late teens to 80's with a leaning towards men in their 30-60's not that this seemed to matter it was all about the skies!
The night opened with a presentation on whats happening in the sky currently - what you can see and when. This was very accessable to the lay person. Many of the sights can actually be seen with the naked eye others require a telescope. Really madee me think about looking up more often. I have thought about this in relation to architecture in the city - the need to look up but hadnt really focused on looking beyond that. There is the obvoius 'it makes you feel very small' but more than that it makes you feel very ignorant (not the club!) to think we (your average pleb) doesnt take more interest in whats going on beyond our own little space.
Little titbits I picked up are:
If the sun sets to your right then you are facing south (I could never remember what why this is)
All stars rise and set like the sun does.
An intersting area touched on was astral photography - would love to know more about the methods of this but I wont be around on the lecture date, it i believe entails attaching an SLR camera to a telescope.
Tonights lecture was on Quasars. I was warned that this might be a more technically diffecult talk that theie usual it did get away from me at times but was interesting none the less. So lets see I hope I have this right..
The first quasar (named 3C48) was a compact radion source identified with a 'stellar object'. A quasar has more radio waves than a star. All galaxies are moving away from us, all space is expanding- like the rising of a cooking pudding. The wave length of a source of light is moving away - toward the red end of the spectrum).
Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, light always moves at the same speed, 3 billion meters per second.
Radio images show jets of material emerging from the centres of quasars at speeds close to light, probably the axis of rotation of the black whole.
Their are billions of quasars - they are all light years away.
The galaxies that are fading now dont have quzars at their centre.
Ok I could have that all wrong but thats what I picked up.
Reading that some of the members reccommended are "Universe" by Kaufman (a textbook), Nightsky magazine, Astronomy magazine (nice images) and Sky and Telescope).
Shanonside Astronomy Club. 8pm Mary Immaculate College.
I got talking to one of the founding members of the club as I waited outside of the meeting to start (there was a board meeting going on inside). He explained that the club strted in 1985 after a astronomy classes given by a Ul Lecturer - the attendees of which decided to set up the club after the classes ended. They currently have articles in the Limerick leader with are focused at everybody rather than just the astronmically learned.
The club aims to encompass all levels of learning and interest in astronomy and is very open to new members. Indeed they were very friendly and only to delighted to give me information about themselves, at the end of the class many members stared behind to give advice to one new member on their new telescope. Their was 22 members at this meeting, men and women from late teens to 80's with a leaning towards men in their 30-60's not that this seemed to matter it was all about the skies!
The night opened with a presentation on whats happening in the sky currently - what you can see and when. This was very accessable to the lay person. Many of the sights can actually be seen with the naked eye others require a telescope. Really madee me think about looking up more often. I have thought about this in relation to architecture in the city - the need to look up but hadnt really focused on looking beyond that. There is the obvoius 'it makes you feel very small' but more than that it makes you feel very ignorant (not the club!) to think we (your average pleb) doesnt take more interest in whats going on beyond our own little space.
Little titbits I picked up are:
If the sun sets to your right then you are facing south (I could never remember what why this is)
All stars rise and set like the sun does.
An intersting area touched on was astral photography - would love to know more about the methods of this but I wont be around on the lecture date, it i believe entails attaching an SLR camera to a telescope.
Tonights lecture was on Quasars. I was warned that this might be a more technically diffecult talk that theie usual it did get away from me at times but was interesting none the less. So lets see I hope I have this right..
The first quasar (named 3C48) was a compact radion source identified with a 'stellar object'. A quasar has more radio waves than a star. All galaxies are moving away from us, all space is expanding- like the rising of a cooking pudding. The wave length of a source of light is moving away - toward the red end of the spectrum).
Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, light always moves at the same speed, 3 billion meters per second.
Radio images show jets of material emerging from the centres of quasars at speeds close to light, probably the axis of rotation of the black whole.
Their are billions of quasars - they are all light years away.
The galaxies that are fading now dont have quzars at their centre.
Ok I could have that all wrong but thats what I picked up.
Reading that some of the members reccommended are "Universe" by Kaufman (a textbook), Nightsky magazine, Astronomy magazine (nice images) and Sky and Telescope).
# posted by Neva Elliott @ 11:30 AM 
