Are you excited yet? I am! The latest Weather forecast looks good for tomorrow night and we have perhaps the best line up of speakers ever for Star-B-Q 2012.

 

People travel from all across Ireland to our Star-B-Q each year to see the "Wonders of the Universe" in a truly dark sky through some very powerful telescopes.

 

And here's why you should join them to see 'wonders' most people in the world will never see and I wanted to share my excitement about these objects with you.

 

These 'wonders' are star clusters, galaxies, gas clouds and planets all look very well in photographs but they have a majestic ethereal quality when seen 'live' in a telescope, with the actual photons of light made by these objects stimulating the cells in your eye after a journey of sometimes millions of years.

 

Apart from the telescopes, just to look up at the Milky Way (which can be seen reaching right down to the horizon from the Wicklow Mountains - see picture on our website) is amazing, and we'll have the most powerful hand-held laser in Ireland that shines a beam that a thousand people can see at once enabling us to teach everyone their way around the sky at once.

The Andromeda Galaxy - our nearest galactic neighbour, nearly a trillion stars 2.5 million light-years away. P.S. make sure you see Tom O'Donoghue's amazing photo of this object which he'll be exhibiting at Star-B-Q.
Click here for photo

 

The Ring Nebula - the remains of a dead star, two thousand light years away. It's an amazing 'doughnut' or 'smoke ring' to your eyes, and think, this is the fate that awaits our own Sun!

 

The Whirlpool Galaxy - a vast spiral galaxy colliding with a smaller neighbour. Another trillion stars first seen to look like a 'whirlpool' by our own Lord Rosse in Co. Offaly.

 

The Great Hercules Cluster - a giant group of nearly a million stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. It looks like someone sprinkled a pile of salt on a black velvet. A truly amazing sight in a big telescope.

 

The Dumbbell Nebula - another dying star making an amazing gas cloud shaped like an apple core. 1400 light years away and an amazing sight in a big telescope.

 

The Pleiades Star Cluster - or "The Seven Sisters" - visible to the naked eye! But best seen in binoculars. You'll be amazed at the view even a €70 telescope gives of this famous cluster.

 

Jupiter - will it have a scar left from that impact earlier this week? Even if not, the cloud belts and moons are an amazing sight in a powerful telescope. Spend a good time straining to see all the detail as it is 450 million miles away remember!

 

The Wild Duck Cluster - about 3,000 stars 6,000 light years away, visible in binoculars and really spectacular in a telescope from a dark sky!

 

There'll be other clusters too like M36, M37, M38 all in Auriga, and lots more targets like the Crab Nebula (a supernova remnant 6,000 light-years away in Taurus)  and more if you stay late, so plan to make a night of it!

 

BOOK NOW
I hope you're excited now and you'll help us make this the biggest fund-raiser we've ever had by getting all your friends and family along tomorrow night. Please book online (or call (01) 890 11 11 and tell us how many in your group).

 

Tickets are only €39 for adults and €29 for children.

 

ALL WELCOME - see webpage for speakers, classes vouchers, exhibition, telescope discounts, and raffles with telescope and binoculars as door prizes!