Cumbrian Sky

Last night was the July meeting of the Eddington Astronomical Society, held, as usual, at Kendal's wonderful Museum. I'm happy to say that there was another good turnout for a guest speaker, which is always appreciated.

 

If you didn't make it to the Museum last night, then I'm sorry to say that you missed one of the best nghts we've ever had! After Chariman Ken Hough introduced the meeting and gave a quick recap of recent Society events - including the previous EAS meeting, when Border AS's Dave Ramshaw gave a very informative talk on "Asteroids" and a trip to the most recent Cockermouth AS to hear Dr Keith Robinson talking about "The Colour of The Universe" - and discussed the September 8th visit of Sky at Night co-presenter Chris Lintott to EAS (it was agreed that we should hold the event at the Museum), and after I had given my usual round-up of all the latest space and astronomy news, it was time for our guest speaker, Unmanned Spaceflight.com's Doug Ellison to take the floor..

 

 

For those that don't know, "UMSF" is probably the most respected and civilised space exploration Forum on t'internet, and Doug set it up back in the days of Beagle 2 and has run it ever since, turning it from what was basically a small bulletinm board to a real online community of amateur astronomers, spaceflight enthusiasts, and space professionals. With over 1200 members, UMSF is now THE website to go to for discussions about all the various unmanned space missions, past, present or future.

 

Doug gave an absolutely wonderful presentation about unmanned space exploration's recent mishaps and disasters; very slick, very professional (I was very jealous of the ripple/fade effect he used to change slides... far too many people went "ooh!" when they saw that for my liking...!), very educational and very funny too; he made me look like a complete amateur (which isn't hard to do, of course, haha!), and it was a joy to sit back and just watch a real pro at work. There were revelations about how close the MER mission came to failure; insights into the "cursed" mission of Galileo, the astounding success of the Mars Pathfinder mission, and much more. Among the many highlights were Doug's use of humourous quotes from various space mission scientists, using an EAS member's umbrella (see above) to demonstrate, in true Blue Peter style, how Galileo's high gain antenna failed to unfurl at Jupiter, and the very tactful way Doug failed to comment when the same member almost broke his neck clambering over chairs to get to his seat...

 

After his talk Doug was happy to answer a couple of questions, and helped explain some difficult concepts to some of the audience who are quite new to astronomy and the realities of space exploration.

 

I am sure anyone who was there last night will agree with me when I say that it was the best presentation we've had, and I'll pass on any thanks people might to Doug. It was also nice to see two of Cockermouth AS's members, Chris and Robin, at the talk. I'm sure they thought it was worth the trip!

 

Thanks again to everyone who came along! And special thanks to Doug for coming to talk to us, to Treasurer David Allan for hosting Doug overnight, and to our Chairman Ken Hough for taking Doug and Dave home after the meeting.