Archive for : May, 2010

Saturn Talk by Carolin Crawford

I went to my local Ely Astro Club on Friday night, at the Ely Museum. I had heard Carolin talk before a couple of times at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy and so I knew her talks are really good.

Tonight the talk was about everything to do with the planet Saturn. Carolin started by talking about the planet itself, and I had forgotten it was a gas giant, and that most of what we see is atmosphere, with the actual planet itself being a lot smaller.

The rings were the next thing to be discussed, and it was surprising that the rings are only about 100m in height. Carolin then thoroughly covered details of all of Saturn’s moons.

As usual the slides and images from Cassini were brilliant, altogether a great talk.

If you want to attend the Ely Astro Club in Cambridgeshire, the meeting is on every 2nd Friday of the month at the back of the Ely Museum – The Old Gaol, Market Street, Ely, CB7 4LS. For more details have a look at the clubs website here: https://sites.google.com/site/elyastroclub/

UFO Lands on my Lawn

I awoke on Sunday morning to find an unusual object on my lawn. A lot of people mistake these items in the sky for UFO. Of course they are chinese flying lanterns.

Chinese Flying Lantern

It’s the first one I have ever seen close-up, let alone one at it’s end of life state. But I was impressed by how bio-degradeable they are.

They are made up of a paper bag with not a metal circle at the base, but it’s actually a wooden made circle and the crosshair struts which hold the lighted area are made of string. I think the base of the area that you light is also made of cork.

After an hour or so it started to rain, and then the whole thing just broke down into a soggy mess.

If you are interested in trying one out, you can buy chinese lanterns from all over the web including Firebox,  Play.com and Amazon