A mosaic of faces and events from the Summer Society Social event held at Rodington in August 2008. We had hoped to have the meeting and then watch the partial lunar eclipse laid on specially for the meeting (yeah right), but the great British summer of 2008 was almost as dismal as 2007, so no one with any sense went outside for more than a few minutes for fear of drowning.
Despite that we had fun. The food was good and plentiful, the quiz not too taxing and the attempts to measure the size of the moon using lengths of hi-tech yellow string illuminating - while also making everyone involved look really silly. A good time was had by all etc.
Grovelling apologies to all who do not appear in the picture. Be grateful though. If you are not shown its because you were, variously: mid-mouthful, yawning, facing the wrong way or otherwise not at your most photogenic.
A mosaic of moments from the Summer Society Social in August 2007. The idea was to follow the occasion with a meteor watch but cloud spotting was more likely.
The get together was catered for and hosted by Alan Herbert and family and took place in the grounds of Leaton Hall. In a twist on our normal rocket firings a rocket was fired that had an altimeter to record the altitude attained - a sort of hi-tech raffle.
An all action scene taken during the 2003 solstice barbecue in June. The weather was better than last year with some bright periods and no torrential downpour.
In addition to the traditional rocket firing contest, there was talk given by Jay Tate of Powys Observatory on the Near Earth Object threat, an address from our President Lembit Opik MP and also a quiz. It was all good fun and quite a success.
A montage of pictures taken during the 2002 society barbecue . The weather was really dreadful with the cloudburst coinciding with attempts to start the barbie. In the end the food was cooked in a rickety oven until the heroic gentleman blowing the embers managed to get the fire going. No observing was done and the rockets were rained off, but Chris Riley of the BBC gave another good talk and the quiz was fun in a silly sort of way. What? You thought the quiz was about astronomy!.
A montage of pictures taken during the 2001 society barbecue. The weather was warm and pleasant with the cloud clearing somewhat in the evening to allow observations with an 8" Newtonian and a 100mm Takahashi refractor. The Straight Wall feature on the Moon was perfectly illuminated and you could see why Takahashis are so popular.
As always we had our rocket firing competition which was fun and required so little skill that even I got a prize this year.
Special thanks are due to Mrs Clayton-Jones for her sterling efforts in the kitchen and to Chris Riley of the BBC for his illustrated talk. Also, a big hello to the people from Chester Astro Society who travelled to share the day with us.
Below is a large montage of photo taken during the year 2000 BBQ at Rodington. The weather was fine during the day for fiddling and examining some of the scopes present and also for using rockets to graphically illustrate the concepts of triangulation and parallax.
Unfortunately, the sky never really cleared that evening but the demonstrations using computers, the bar and discussions made for an interesting time.
This page last modified 17th November 2010. Copyright of all images remains with whoever took the image/photograph.