1. STAR-B-Q NEWS If you were intending to come to Astronomy Ireland's Star-B-Q on August 22, Ireland's biggest gathering of astronomy enthusiasts, first the bad news. All 200 tickets sold out since I warned you of heavy booking in our last Star-B-Q email! Now, the good news. We have found a NEW VENUE that can cater for thousands of people. It's near Roundwood, just a few minutes drive from the site we have been using for a decade. We'll have the same dark skies (in fact, slightly darker) and much better facilities - power, toilets, lecture hall etc. We are very excited about this new venue as this is the biggest fund raising event for the society each year. So tell all your friends - Star-B-Q bookings have re-opened. Call (01) 847 0777 Monday to Saturday up to 6pm for details and credit card bookings (or post cheque/postal order/bank draft to P.O.Box 2888, Dublin 5). Tickets include all food and telescope use including Ireland's largest portable telescope - the 21-inch Millennium Telescope. UNTIL JULY 31st ONLY: you can book as many adult tickets as you wish at the reduced rate of 20 euro, but after July 31 the full price of 25 euro applies. Under 16s (who MUST be supervised by an adult) tickets are 20 euro at all times. Everyone in Ireland, north and south, is invited. Ireland's biggest annual gathering of astronomy enthusiasts, our Star-B-Q, just got bigger and better! 2. MARS! And MARS WATCHES I spent a couple of hours last Monday night in Wicklow mountains under crystal clear sky with Celestron 8-inch SCT. Milky Way down to the horizon and Sagittarius Teapot nicely visible. Actually Tom Finnegan and I were checking out (astronomically) the new venue for Star-B-Q on August 22. Saw I.S.S. on all 3 passes that night! For the second pass, at 1:24am we were in the mountains. ISS was very high, passing right thru the middle of the Summer Triangle. It was brighter than Mars (mag. -2). Viewing I.S.S from a dark rural sky is THE way to do it! Back at Mars: As I say in the August issue Sky Diary (see caption for the surface feature map) "July 20 to August 1" are the dates when Syrtis Major and Hellas are on view. Viewing in Celestron 8-inch at 290x with W25 (deep red) filter we could clearly see the small but bright south polar cap. Seeing was not great with Mars often 'dancing' all around the place at high speed but it did settle down for an instant every once in a while and I could see Syrtis Major coming on to the disk. Then at around 1:40am BST (Central Meridian longitude 311degrees) I glimpsed Hellas. Those dust storms Parker et al saw in late June/early July would have just been on the limb. Certainly nothing covering Syrtis Major (yet!). All in all a very rewarding nights observation despite the poor seeing (of course Mars was only 15 degrees up in the southeast). Mars' disk was 20.5 arc seconds, about as good as it got in June 2001 but it was much lower then so I was getting my best views since 1988 (23.8") when I bought the C8. Looking forward to better seeing and absence of global dust storms! Have you stayed up late to watch Mars yet? We've had a couple of photos in but surprisingly little for how big Mars disk is (23" this week!). Astronomy Ireland will be running at least 10 PUBLIC MARS WATCHES all around the country on the day Mars is closest to the Earth - Wednesday August 27. A new page will shortly announce the details on our website www.astronomy.ie. If you have a scope and can help out please email info@astronomy.ie 3. I.S.S. INTERVIEWS Some of you may have heard me being interviewed by David Hanly on RTE Radio 1's prestigious MORNING IRELAND show this morning (July 28). You can still hear the interview online at http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0728/morningireland/morningireland10a.smil I am also due to be interviewed on Cork's Red FM at 9:40pm tonight Monday July 28. I believe you can listen in online at www.redfm.ie See what you think! Don't forget, you can still see I.S.S. every evening this week until Sunday August 3rd inclusive. Call our 1550-111-442 newsline each afternoon for the exact time to watch that evening (09001 88 1950 in N.Ireland/Britain). I did lots of interviews last week on radio and to the press, including The Irish Times, DEN TV, etc. so hopefully the whole country is watching I.S.S. blaze over every evening. If you see any pieces in the print media please post me a cutting (including the name of the paper and the date - tear out the whole page if you can) to: P.O.Box 2888, Dublin 5 (I'm especially interested to know did the Irish Times publish their piece yet - did you see it?). ===== David Moore BSc FRAS, Chairman, Astronomy Ireland, P.O.Box 2888, Dublin 5. Editor, "Astronomy & Space" magazine. ASTRONOMY SHOP: open Mon.-Fri. 9am-6pm and Sat. noon-6pm. Tel (01) 847 0777. Fax (01) 847 0771. WWW: http://www.astronomy.ie (Subscribe FREE to AI's Events emailing list) Email: info@astronomy.ie