AstroWest 2001

The opening day of AstroWest 2001

The event itself started at around mid-day on Friday 17th August with the arrival of the first family of campers. They were greeted by David Norman (Chairman of event hosts, Torbay Astronomical Society). Dave had arrived earlier to put up signposts round to the large field at the back of the school and give the first campers a warm welcome.

Grahame Veale (Torbay AS and Head of Science at the Torquay Boys' Grammar School) arrived soon after to open up all the kitchen, shower and toilet facilities. As principal contact for the camping part of the event, Grahame was soon welcoming the now steady flow of new arrivals from around the country.

John Parratt (president of the SWAA) arrived at around 4.15pm with his younger daughter Stacey and friend Rick Dooley (Chairman of North Devon AS). A round of introductions followed and copies of the event programme were handed out.

Kieron McGrath, owner of major south-west dealer SCS Astro, arrived early in the evening with a van-full of telescopes and other exciting astronomical gadgets and goodies.

(click on any image to see the full version)

Although the not-so-good weather forecast had led to some uncertainty over how many campers would actually turn up, all those expected on the day duly arrived. These included several visitors who had stayed on the site during the week of the total eclipse in 1999.

Friday evening had been earmarked for observing the night sky with the various telescopes available, including the 19-inch at the school's observatory. However, the increasingly cloudy weather decided otherwise! Instead, an astronomical quiz was held in the lecture theatre. The quiz master was John Stapleton, a former long-standing member of Torbay AS (now based in Southampton). John has a great reputation for setting informative and entertaining quiz questions - and these certainly made us all think!

All in all a good first evening.

Saturday

The event started at 10am with a talk by John Parratt on 'The Planet Mars' - an excellent subject to kick off the lecture programme with Mars the most prominent object in the evening sky during recent months.

The next talk was by David Norman on 'The International Space Station', showing how the station is being constructed, the different sections and the countries who made them. Dave presents a monthly spot covering the ISS and astronomical events on BBC Radio Devon.

After the 11am coffee break Grahame Veale talked about 'Near Earth Objects'. A dramatic and riveting explanation of what could happen if an asteroid hit the Earth, and future plans to destroy or deflect them.

At 12pm Ian Walsh (TAS) presented his talk on 'The Lost World of 2001'. A very interesting talk about the film '2001 a Space Odyssey' and how we should have built a space station, with larger rockets, many years ago.

12.30 to 2.00 lunch break

At 2pm the main talk of the day was presented by our special guest from Australia, Hamish Lindsay. Hamish talked about his new book, 'Tracking Apollo to the Moon' and his career as a mission tracker at Honeysuckle tracking station in Australia when the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes were running. He related some of the humourous and serious discussions he had with a lot of the astronauts; along with the highlights and disasters of their missions.

Following his talk, Hamish signed some of the many copies of his book purchased at the event.

At 3pm Chris Proctor (Vice-chairman and Observations Secretary of Torbay AS) did a talk on 'Digital Astro-Photography'. Chris has done a lot of excellent work with both conventional film photography and CCD imaging over the years. Many of these images feature in the gallery section of the TAS web-site at http://torbayastro.org.uk.

At 4pm Roland Tarver talked about 'Making a Telescope'. Roland, a member of the North Devon AS, talked on grinding and polishing a primary mirror and its testing and fault finding before the final aluminising stage. He also covered the different grinding and polishing powders. Judging by the many questions afterward he certainly got a few people interested in mirror making!

While the talks where in progress a range of exhibits were on show in the display hall. Tiverton AS and Torbay AS showed off the societies and activities. Kieron McGrath of SCS Astro was there displaying a range of telescopes for visitors to buy and look at.

Also on sale was an extensive range of astronomical books from Springer Publications. The star attraction amongst these was, of course, Hamish Landsay's "Tracking Apollo to the Moon". This is an excellent detailed account of man's ventures into space - including both Soviet and US missions right through from Gagarin's first flight to the end of the Apollo era. Extensive use of first-hand explanation and commentary from the astronauts and engineers directly involved with each mission puts the reader right in a front seat for the ride!

At 6pm the barbeque got started and surprise, surprise, it had stopped raining. Everybody enjoyed themselves, including all the children (not only was this event an astronomical one, but it was for families as well).

Then the excitement really began, when Ian Walsh launched several rockets. Everybody loved this - even Hamish and his wife joined in on the countdowns!

The observatory was opened and the 'net' was consulted for an up to date weather report and satellite image - which was not all that good. However, there were some gaps in the cloud and a eventually a few stars were seen. Still, a pleasant evening was spent gathered in groups talking about what we all had done throughout the year and having a good laugh. Many of the visitors had retired to their camp-beds early - knocked out by all that warm and fresh south-western air!

Sunday

After saying their goodbyes, the visiting campers headed home, now looking forward to next year.

All in all, for our first event AstroWest 2001 went even better than we had expected - despite the weather. So much so that everybody who camped said how much they enjoyed the weekend and wanted to come back next year. Here's looking forward to AstroWest 2002!