AstroWest 2002

The 2002 "AstroWest" meeting was held at the Torquay Boys' Grammar School from Thursday 15th to Saturday 17th August. With an overall structure similar to the first AstroWest in 2001, this year's event again featured an "astro-camp" and a public open day with trade exhibits, society exhibits, talks, barbeque and rocket launches. Once again the whole event was a great success - helped this time by weather that was much more settled than last year, allowing plenty of observational activity on each of the three nights of camping (up from two nights in 2001).

The 2002 astro-camp

This year a third night of camping was added to last year's two. Many of our 'astro-campers' come a long way to visit AstroWest so the extra night was widely welcomed (and likely to be added to further next year).

Grahame Veale (Torbay AS vice-chairman and Head of Science at the Torquay Boys' Grammar School) arrived early on the first day (Thursday) to open up all the kitchen, shower and toilet facilities. As an event organiser and principal contact for the astro-camp, Grahame was soon welcoming a steady flow of arrivals from around the country.

The first night of observational activity was particularly successful once the first quarter moon had set. The cool and calm air across the main school field was soon host to a wide range of astronomical instruments. The school's 19-inch reflector peered into the dark sky and some very impressive equipment brought to the site by the campers was in full action. Altogether, a scene of peaceful contemplation of the heavens interrupted only by the occasional whirring of a 'goto' scope seeking its next target.

The second (Friday) evening saw the arrival of Dave Norman (chairman of event hosts, Torbay Astronomical Society) along with fellow event organisers John Parratt (with his younger daughter, Stacey) and Kieron McGrath, owner of major south-west dealer SCS Astro. As he did last year, Kieron once again arrived in a van-full of telescopes and other exciting astronomical gadgets and goodies!

(click on any image to see the full version)

The Public Open Day

The campers awoke Saturday morning to the sound of the local seagulls on another pleasant day ...

The day's programme officially commenced at 11am with the opening of the trade exhibition. These included Kieron McGrath of SCS Astro, displaying a wide range of telescopes for visitors to buy and look at.

Trade stands on the Public Open Day

The lecture programme commenced at mid-day with a fascinating and humorous explanation of what it's like to be "At Home in Space" presented by our special guest David Shayler. David is a prolific space and astronomy author, including titles such as "Disasters and Accidents in Manned Space Flights", "Gemini - Steps to the Moon" and "Skylab - America's Space Station". He also co-authored with Rex Hall on "The Rocket Men - Vostok & Voskhod, The First Soviet Manned Spaceflights".

The next two talks (either side of lunch) were by TAS chairman David Norman. The first examined some of the amazingingly detailed images from the new advanced camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The second looked at the techniques used to detect 'extrasolar' planets (those around stars other than our Sun). Dave presents a monthly spot covering spaceflight and astronomical events on BBC Radio Devon.

The next talk was by John Parratt of North Devon Astronomical Society. John covered the past history of the North Devon AS and looked forward to its future plans for a major new observatory.

This was followed by a presentation from Exeter Astronomical Society on their successful use of video cameras to capture dynamic astronomical events such as lunar occultations.

After a break for tea our second major talk of the day was presented by astronomical writer Paul Money. Paul was here at the school for the 1999 eclipse and has written many articles for the astronomical press (including one featured recently in "Astronomy Now" on his completing a full Messier Marathon down at COAA in Portugal). The wide-ranging subject of Paul's talk was "The Wonders of the Universe!", and took us on an illustrated tour from the viewpoint of a photon of light travelling from the farthest reachs of the universe to the Earth.

To finish off the lecture programme and prepare us for our evening of observations, Dr Chris Proctor (TAS Observations Secretary) did a talk on 'The Night Sky'. 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.

David Shayler presenting 'At Home in Space' David Shayler presenting 'At Home in Space' David Norman (chairman, TAS) presenting the latest HST images Paul Money presenting 'The Wonders of the Universe' Paul Money presenting 'The Wonders of the Universe' Chris Proctor (TAS) presenting 'The Night Sky' A packed library for the lecture programme David Shayler and Paul Money with Stacey Parratt Paul Money with John Parratt

At 7pm the barbeque got under way. As last year, this proved a great social success with a number of family guests visiting us for the evening session.

At 8pm the excitement really began with the rocket launching event! Several rockets were brought along from the school, members of the society and visitors. In fact, we had two launch pads set up and were still pushed to get all the rockets launched while the light lasted! Everybody loved this and all present helped with the countdowns!

Finally, the observatory was opened up and observations of the moon and other night-sky objects began. We were also presented with the possibility of seeing a close fly by of a near-Earth asteroid (2002 NY40) during the night and early hours of Sunday morning.

Our second AstroWest went very well, with much better weather than last year. Once again the campers all said how much they enjoyed the weekend and wanted to come back next year. Here's looking forward to AstroWest 2003!