Whenever the new year comes around I always look forward to it because I know that just one month later marks the two day European Astrofest in Kensington town hall. This year it fell on Friday 10th Feb.
For images of the event click
here.
I attended both days with tickets for all four lecture sessions so I could cherry pick the lectures I really wanted to see. In the end I managed to see at least two lectures from each session, including the whole of the Saturday morning session.
Lectures spanned across both days were split into four sessions. Topics were varied and included Stars and the Sun, Climate Change, Cosmology, Lunar exploration, Extrasolar planets and even the discovery of an object named Hannys Voorwerp! However, I would have to say that Solar astronomy was the most prominent theme in this year's series of lectures.
Lecturers included Noah Pedro, Dr Lucie Green, Dr Stuart Clark, Carlos Frenk, Hanny van Arkel, Dr Allan Chapman and journalist and science popularist Simon Singh. Unfortunately former Member of Parliament Lembit Opik could not make it due to personal commitments.
The quality of talks this year were excellent. I especially liked Dr Stuart Clark's talk giving a historical account of the 'alleged' connection between Solar activity and the changes in Earth's climate. Hanny van Arkel's talk about her serendipitous discovery of a new object in the Universe was an inspiration for all those thinking of signing up to the social network website 'Zooniverse'.
It was the first time I have ever attended a talk by Simon Singh. It was about the Big Bang which by coincidence was the title of one of his books, that was published a little while ago. It was very good and informative...he even did a physics experiment on the stage where he 'electrocuted' a gherkin. His anecdotes were extremely funny especially about his encounter singer-songwriter Kate Meluah. At the end of the talk Simon Singh was signing his books. In fact the queue was so long he (actually I think it was Ian Ridpath) had to run to his car to get more of his books!
As usual early on the saturday afternoon there was a book signing frenzy which seems to nowadays become somewhat of an Astrofest tradition. This year it was the turn of John Mason, Patrick Moore and Brian May. Brian May has made a regular appearance every year since 2007. It took about an hour in the queue to get to the room where the three was signing their books. I got Brian to sign the latest Queen book which celebrate 40years of the band in the music industry.
The sky at night team were also there, Paul Abel, Peter Lawrence and celebrity impressionist extraordinaire John Culshaw who makes a regular appearance on the show as he has an interest in Astronomy. (off topic!) John Culshaw does a great impression of my cousin Robert Peston. So when I introduced myself to him he immediately launched into an impression of Robert! It was genuine pleasure to meet him.
This year I had a list of items I wanted to purchase, unfortunately I only ended up with one item which was a Vixen two inch 42mm Lanthanum wide-field eyepiece. However, I did end up purchasing several books and getting them signed by the authors Dr Stuart Clark, Simon Singh and Brian May.
Once again both days seem to fly by so quickly. On the whole it was a great Astrofest and am already looking forward to next year's event.
