Spring Sale DVD Membership Shop 1. 'Supermoon' Tomorrow Night Tomorrow night - Saturday, May 5th - sees a very special kind of Full Moon commonly known as a 'supermoon', when observers will have a chance to see a bigger and brighter Moon than usual. Click HERE for more information. David Moore spoke on radio yesterday and today about this celestial event, and you can listen to the interviews at www.astronomy.ie/audio. He will also feature on RTE Radio 1 this evening on 'Drivetime' from 5pm. This interview will also be put online soon after. We are urging people to take photographs of the Moon this weekend and email them to observe@astronomy.ie to be included in an upcoming issue of Astronomy & Space magazine. 2. Astronomy This Bank Holiday Weekend Tonight, the Moon will act as a "signpost" for finding Saturn, which will be located just above the Moon and the bright star Spica. A telescope will not only reveal the moons of Saturn, but also its famous rings that Galileo saw in 1610. On Monday, May 6th, the extremely bright planet Venus will be placed less that a degree from the second-magnitude star Alnath, in the constellation Taurus. While Alnath is a distant star around 130 million light-years away, Venus is much closer, and a telescope will reveal its crescent shape. Over the coming weekend stargazers will see the two objects move gradually closer together each night. Be sure to send your observation reports and photos of this weekend's astronomy to observe@astronomy.ie 3. Public Lecture: The Science of Armageddon 65 million years ago a 10km wide object travelled through space and hit what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, releasing 2 million times more energy than the Soviet Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever built, and leaving a crater 180km in diameter. It was this event that is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs. The Spaceguard Centre and Observatory in the UK is a privately-owned facility that monitors the sky for potential killer asteroids. Astronomy Ireland's May Public Lecture will be delivered by the Centre's director, Jay Tate, where he will explore the threats from space and what we can do about them in order to protect life on Earth as best we can. The lecture, The Science of Armageddon, will take place on May 14th at 8pm in Trinity College Dublin, and tickets and DVDs can be ordered online HERE. Astronomy Ireland The world's most popular Astronomy Club www.astronomy.ie ( subscribe / unsubscribe )