The 2010 Astrofest was held at Kensington Town Hall on 5th and 6th February last weekend. This time I decided to attend three out of the four lecture sessions over the two days (both Friday sessions and the Saturday morning session).
This year's speakers included Monica Grady, Allan Chapman, Jill Tarter and as a special treat Brian May and Patrick Moore.
There were also lectures on cosmology from researchers at the forefront of the subject. This topic is a personal favorite of mine since I studied it as part of my degreee over ten years ago. Much has changed since then. The results from cosmological surveys infers that the Universe is much bigger than originally thought (45 billion Light Years across) and that there is circumstantial evidence that Dark Energy is expanding the Universe at an accelerating rate.
Both days were very well attended, in fact I think Friday was better attended than Friday last year. Saturday was very busy especially because Brian May and Patrick Moore were doing a Q&A session in the late morning and in the afternoon the two of them plus Chris Lintott were signing copies of Bang!. Queues were very long to see them and it took over an hour until I finally got into the signing room. It was nice to see all three again and I took the opportunity to thank Brian for publicising my book on the Bang website in 2008. I also got a picture taken with him.
This year I set out to purchase a few items including my friend's (Jack Martin) book "A Spectroscopic Atlas of Bright Stars - Pocket Field Guide" by Springer. I was also after a motor focuser for my lxd55 refractor.
The motor focuser I purchased is an Orion Accufocuser. The focuser is not dedicated for the lxd55 rack and pinion mount but with a little DIY it will suitably retro fit to the focus mount, saving over £90 if I was to purchase a dedicated motor focuser.
It was great two days and as usual the time seem to go very quick... one of the better Astrofests I have attended!
