Staring into Space, standing on the ground

Night Power
These wind turbines would have turn for eternity to produce the power generated by even one of those distant stars.

I’m finally going to join the Galway Astronomy club in January when I attend their Galway Astronomy Festival in late January. If I’m going to spend cold nights staring into space [and I can highly recommend it], I might as well learn what I’m looking at. In the picture above, I can only recognise one formation (the Pleiades - the cluster of blue stars in the upper right corner of the image). Click on the picture above for a larger version..

2 thoughts

  1. Hi John: you won’t regret taking up astronomy. If you haven’t already seen the rings of Saturn through a telescope, I can promise it will blow your mind! And that’s despite knowing about them in advance… Hard to imagine how it must have looked to those first observers in the 1600s.

    This just arrived in my mailbox, and you may find it useful: John Flannery of the South Dublin astronomy group, put together a guide to the Irish night sky for 2009
    http://www.southdublinastronomy.org/w/im…4/Sky_guide_2009.pdf

    Clear skies.

    Mary

  2. Hi Mary,
    Thanks for the info. I visited the Science Museum when I was in Florence a few years ago and I could not believe how crude and simple were the telescopes used by Galileo. I’ve just bought a small telescope and got to play with it last night. About 15 years ago, I stood shivering in a carpark in Tallaght at a viewing run by Astronomy Ireland and saw the rings of Saturn through a fairly big telescope – you’re right – it was mind-blowing,
    BR,
    John

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