Today, it was the turn of the u3a Interest Groups Online – Astronomy to grab my attention. There were a good 12 or 15 people on the Zoom call. Whilst I didn’t know much about the backgrounds of any of the people, I’m sure there was at least one member of the Royal Astronomical Society present.
We had a really interesting discussion about various topics, from interstellar invaders into the solar system to the use of telescopes like the Square Kilometre Array and what they can do for the subject.
Towards the end of the session, the group leader went down the usual route of asking about individual contributions. Well, like all the other topics I follow on the u3a, I really would like to do something. But the distinct impression I got from the group was that their real focus is deep space. I’m happy to watch The Sky at Night, even read Astronomy Now, which I can get free on BorrowBox (although, I’d prefer to have the actual magazine), so to a reasonable degree, especially as Colin has realised where I volunteer, and so will doubtless be giving me the third degree on the latest activities of the likes of NASA, resurrecting a situation that exist in the office 10 years ago (which I don’t really mind).
Anyhow, I got sidetracked there. The group leader went around all of us individually asking us what we thought, and I confessed my inability to contribute meaningfully to discussions on deep space, but that I was a member of our local U3A stargazing group, and mostly enjoyed naked-eye observing with some use of binoculars, especially the ones in the header photo, which are called constellation binos. The magnification isn’t huge, but they do capture a lot of light. For example, I have seen satellites that are not visible to the naked eye with them. I haven’t really used them much, as the long days have made it a bit harder to stay up late.
With the nights drawing in now, evening observations are becoming a practical possibility again, so I am hoping to get out and watch the sky a bit more. When I mentioned this on the call, quite a number of people said they would be interested both in hearing about the group and also in a bit of a report on using binoculars, especially the new ones. So it seems I do potentially have something good to report on. Good.
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