The Full Moon of Saturday August 16th coincides with an almost Total Lunar Eclipse. The Moon will be partially eclipsed as it rises at about 8:30pm and mid-eclipse will occur at approximately 10:10pm when 80% of the Moon will be darkened by the Earth's shadow. The show ends at 11:45pm. Astronomy Ireland has organised no less than eight Eclipse Watches around the country, in counties: Carlow, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Limerick, Louth and Mayo. Further details, including details of venues are available at www.astronomy.ie/lunareclipse0808.html and in the August "Eclipse Issue" of our magazine available for 5euro here. Everyone is invited along to any of the venues.

STOP PRESS: The Irish Independent want any photos you take of the Eclipse or people at our Watches. Please email to observe@astronomy.ie by 1pm Sunday.

2. Perseid Meteor Shower Spectacular

The recent poor weather broke and AI Chairman David Moore(*) saw 115 meteors in about 2 hours on the night of maximum activity. See his report at the top of this webpage www.astronomy.ie/perseids08. You should still see Perseids until the weekend, though moonlight will swamp the fainter ones. See our magazine for more background details, and the above webpage. If you even saw only 1 Perseid please email your location, date and time to observe@astronomy.ie for our magazine report. We have had fantastic media coverage of this shower and the August 1st solar eclipse - see our Media Archive (which is still being updated).

(*)STOP PRESS: David Moore will be on radio nationwide at 10pm this evening on NewsTalk for 2 hours of current affairs. Tune to 106 FM or listen worldwide on www.newstalk.ie

3. Star-B-Q - NASA scientist and Huge Telescope Prize

Our annual fundraising Star-B-Q takes place in Roundwood, Co. Wicklow on Saturday August 30. Star-B-Q is Ireland's biggest annual Star Party with people coming from all around Ireland, so don't be left out.

We are delighted to announce that this year's Keynote speaker at Star-B-Q will be Dr James McAteer who worked for NASA on the SOHO space telescope.

For the first time ever, all attendees are entered into a free draw for a Celestron Nexstar 8SE worth nearly 1,500euro. Other prizes on the night are a Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium and a year's membership to Astronomy Ireland (total prizes worth over 2,000euro!).