Monmouth Astronomical Research Society(M.A.R.S.)
MARS
Our February meeting will be next Tuesday 8th February 2011 at 7:30 pm in the Physics Lab at Monmouth Boys School. Please note the change of room to the lab. We are going to have a practical Teach-In session on Astronomy Software. We will concentrate on the two good pieces of free software Celestia and Stellarium. Please bring your laptop, PC or a MAC. For those who do not have a portable, Keith will be able to kit you out with a school laptop (for the night only!). Because you will not be able to connect your personal laptop to the school server, you will need to have downloaded the (free) software onto your laptop before the meeting. Details of where to download the programmes from are given below:
Celestia http://www.shatters.net/celestia/download.html
Stellarium http://www.stellarium.org/
If you have a wireless broadband connection you may be able to access the internet on the night but it would still be easier, quicker and cheaper to download the programmes beforehand. Also, a wheel mouse is a great help for navigating.
Keith will take us through some of the joys of whizzing through the Universe with Celestia, and then we will look at Stellarium. To finish Steve Foulkes hopefully will show us what a really serious piece of software like The Sky can do. If you have any software that you like and use (Starry Night, Cartes du Ciel etc) or an iPhone or iPad App please bring that along too.
That’s the programme - there won’t be time for much else…..
A few bits of Astronomy news
· On 21st January NASA successfully deployed its Nano Sail experiment into low earth orbit. Its 100sq m metallised polyester sail will be propelled by photons for the next 90 – 120 days. You can see low in the sky and there are prizes for photographing it. Details at http://spaceweather.com/ and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats/nanosaild.html Pass details for Monmouth
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4.5 |
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20:04:35 |
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4.5 |
20:26:33 |
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20:27:01 |
12 |
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20:27:01 |
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4.5 |
20:48:51 |
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20:49:25 |
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4.1 |
19:33:00 |
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4.7 |
21:11:17 |
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21:11:49 |
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3.9 |
19:54:58 |
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19:56:42 |
17 |
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4.9 |
21:33:52 |
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21:34:11 |
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· ‘Scientists from the American space agency NASA say they might have found as many as 1000 new planets in distant solar systems’ So BBC news trumpeted this week. But note the words ’may’ and ‘as many as’ and in the fine print ‘planet candidates’ – still exciting stuff though.. Details at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12349872 and http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=98
Hope to see you next Tuesday the 8th of February.
Colin Harris 01600 775656