Astronomy Irelands extremely popular 'Astronomy For Beginners' evening classes will commence at locations nationwide on October 7th. The course, professionally developed by the Astronomy Ireland team, is aimed towards the general public. With a style that is informal and questions encouraged, this course is suitable for anyone with an interest in astronomy that wants a good grounding in this fantastic hobby without any complicated mathematical content or complex data. The course is given over a period of 8 weeks and covers topics such as:

Introduction to the night sky, The Sun and the Moon, The Planets and Stars,

The History of Astronomy, Telescopes, Deep Sky Objects and The Big Bang

Classes take place each week from 7:30 - 9:30pm (including a 15 minute break) with the first class and registration taking place on Thursday, October 7th.

This year, we will have classes running in the following ten locations:

Athlone, Cork, Dublin, Dundalk, Galway,

Letterkenny, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Waterford.

Classes cost 180euro (members rate 130euro) and include membership to Astronomy Ireland and a subscription to our magazine, 'Astronomy & Space'. As 2010 marks our 20th anniversary when you sign up for evening classes this year you will get 20 months membership instead of 12 - that's 8 free magazines!

Places must be booked in advance so don't delay - book your spot today! To enrol for the classes call us on (01) 847 0777 or click the link below to enrol online. For more information visit www.astronomy.ie/class.

CLICK HERE TO ENROL

2. Education Programme

Astronomy Ireland have a very successful School Education Programme with a team of Education Officers who travel around Irish schools (primary and secondary) giving fascinating talks on astronomy. We have been inundated with requests from you for information about the programme to drop into your local schools.

The talks are comprised of a highly visual PowerPoint presentation lasting approximately 40 minutes, which is both fun and of course educational, with time for a Q&A session at the end. Talks can be tailored to suit each groups needs (age, knowledge level, particular interests, etc.) and talks for junior groups can be tailored to be more visually appealing with less detailed content, and more time for questions.

Our aim is to 'Build a Science Culture for Ireland' and with your help we can get astronomy established as a more widely-studied subject in the Irish curriculum, getting more and more young people learning about and enjoying this fantastic subject as a result.

If you know somebody who might be interested in a school visit, have children yourself, are a teacher or would be willing to drop some information into your local school please email edu@astronomy.ie or call our Education Officer on (01) 847 0777 for more information about the programme.

Alternatively, log on to www.astronomy.ie/outreach for more information or click the link below to book a visit.

BOOK A TALK

3. Talk in Dunsink Observatory

On Friday, September 17th Professor Michael Burton, School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Australia will be giving a talk entitled 'The Formation of Molecular Clouds in our Galaxy' in Dunsink Observatory. The talk will take place at 8pm, this is a free event which may include viewing through the Grubb telescope if the evening sky is clear. For more details on this talk please contact Dunsink Observatory on 01 662 1333.