1. Shuttle & Space Station together over Ireland for next Fortnight. The 100 billion-Euro INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (ISS) will be flying over Irish skies every night this week! Incredibly, on Friday night it will be joined by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which is undertaking an 11-day mission, that includes spacewalks to attach 2 new truss segments and another giant 80-metre solar panel. These extensions will make the Space Station the largest and brightest object ever to fly in Earth-orbit. Atlantis should be launched from Florida at 12:38am our time on Saturday morning (i.e. just after midnight Friday night). Then 18 minutes later (approximately 12:56am) Atlantis should be visible low in the South from Ireland with it's giant external fuel tank next to it in the sky - an amazing and extremely rare sight! SPACE CHASE: Over the weekend the Shuttle can be seen chasing the space station across the sky; an amazing and very rare sight. Docking is scheduled for Monday, but we'll keep you posted on the Newsline. Newsline: To give people a better chance of seeing the International Space Station, Astronomy Ireland has set up a special Newsline with a brief message giving the exact time and where to look and other information about the mission. The Newsline is updated by 12 noon each day with the exact minute that I.S.S. (and Atlantis) will pass over Ireland that evening. Simply call 1550-111-442 (calls cost 95c/min) after 12 noon and before sunset. There are websites that give this information but they are often not updated promptly and especially not with special events like the External Fuel Tank story on Friday night/Saturday morning. The message is less than a minute long so if you cannot afford 1 euro do not call. Also, this Newsline can handle hundreds of callers simultaneously, something our staff could never do on our landlines! So please pass this number on to everyone you know and let's get the whole country out watching space history in the making! The ISS is the most expensive piece of space-hardware ever, representing a collaborative effort of nearly 20 countries, including Ireland. Currently onboard are two men and one woman - Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov and Suni Williams. The space shuttle Discovery will have a crew of 7 men. There is a page about I.S.S. on our website (see the left hand menu). The ISS will be visible EVERY NIGHT until Saturday 16 June. Please email any sightings, ESPECIALLY of the Shuttle+External Tank to observe@astronomy.ie giving the time and your location and a brief description of what you see. 2. NASA Sun Expert - Public Lecture & Pat Kenny Show Interview Just this week a giant sunspot group, bigger than Earth, appeared on the Sun's surface. It's almost as if it was arranged to coincide with our June public lecture, which is all about the Sun on Monday June 11th. See the latest SOHO image of the sunspot here http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html. Be careful if you try to view the sunspot yourself and always use AstroSolar filter in front of your telescope, binoculars or eyes. It's available from our Shop at modest cost, call the number below. Our speaker is NASA Sun expert Dr Peter Gallagher who worked on the SOHO and RHESSI spacecraft at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, USA and also at the Owens Valley Solar Array and the Big Bear Solar Observatory (both in California) spacecraft. He is currently a lecturer with the School of Physics in Trinity College Dublin. Dr Gallagher will be appearing on the Pat Kenny Show (RTE Radio 1, Monday 10am - 12pm) to discuss the lecture, recent solar discoveries, and much else. This can be heard NATIONWIDE. We think of our planet as a ball of rock isolated in the vacuum of space, affected only by the Sun's constant light and gravitational pull. But our active star regularly fires blobs of super-heated ionised gas at us, which when the reach our upper atmosphere can produce spectacular auroral displays, disrupt electrical grids, and destroy equipment in orbit, including endangering astronauts in the International Space Station. If you can't make it to Dublin on the night you can pre-order a DVD of the lecture at www.astronomy.ie (click on "Lecture DVD" on the menu at left). This is an important service for all those of you who live outside Dublin. More 'national' services, and events, like this are being planned this year also. Given Dr Gallagher's appearance on RTE you can reserve tickets for this talk on our website or call the number below, or come along a few minutes early to get tickets on the night. Doors open 7:30pm. Bookings: www.astronomy.ie or (01) 847 07 77 Lecture Title: "The Heliosphere-Living inside the Sun's Atmosphere" Lecture Venue: Physics Building, Trinity College Dublin. Date: Monday, 11 June 2007 Time: 8:00pm Admission: 5euro (3euro concessions) ALL WELCOME Astronomy Ireland "The world's most popular astronomy club" Society · Magazine · Telescopes www.astronomy.ie Tel (01) 847 0777