Season's greetings

Wishing everyone a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Hopefully 2012 will be a good year for astronomy.

Clear skies.

Chris.

Telescope for sale

I've had someone contact me looking to sell a secondhand telescope.
The 'scope is a Meade LX90 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and comes with a computerised 'GOTO' mount and accessories including eight eyepieces.
The owner describes the telescope as 'hardly used' and as this is a high end telescope is looking for £1250 for it. If anyone is interested please contact me and I will pass on the sellers details to you.
Chris.

Stargazing in Cockermouth January 2012

We are planning our Stargazing event for January 2012. The event is designed to support the BBC Stargazing LIVE series which will air between 16th and 18th January, presented by Prof Brian Cox among others. The series was very popular earlier this year and looks set to be equally popular this time. Our event is later in the month, on 28th January and this time we will have an exhibition and talks in the afternoon followed by talks and observing in the evening.

More details will be published as we prepare for the event. In the meantime put the date for our event and, of course, the TV series in your diary.

Details are also on the BBC Things to Do website.

CAS Christmas drinks

Tomorrow night (Wednesday 14th December) is our annual social get together for a few pre Christmas drinks and chat. We will also discuss planning for our Stargazing LIVE event in January. 

We'll meet up about 8pm in The Swan on Kirkgate. I'll probably be a few minutes late. 

Look forward to seeing you there. 

Chris. 

November Meeting Report

The moon was the main topic for our November meeting. Denis Kelly provided us with some new insights on the moon and it origins based on a recent distant learning course he has completed on the subject. The talk not only provided details on the moon which were new to most people in the audience but demonstrated just how much knowledge is out there on the Internet for interested amateurs to learn more about the hobby.

Following a brief news update from Chris we discussed and agreed our plans to support the BBC Stargazing LIVE programmes to be shown in January. We agreed that we will hold a afternoon and evening event on Saturday 28th January in the United Reformed Church on Cockermouth Main Street. We will also have hands on observing in Memorial Gardens, weather permitting. The event this January was a success, although the weather was not kind to us, let's hope it is better this time.

Society members' help will be essential for success. We need volunteers to help with displays, bring along telescopes and other equipment and generally be around to point people in the right direction and answer questions if possible. You don't need lots of knowledge and experience to help out.

To help with planning it would be useful if you could book the date in your diary and let me know via email if you are available to help.

Chris.