AstroFest

Erica and I recently went down to Kensington to AstroFest. We had a great time. I personally attended a couple of fascinating lectures. One was about the detection and tracking of Near Earth Objects and the other about the restoration of Moon landing footage. I also bumped in to a lecturer, Don Kurtz, who recently appeared on BBC Stargazing Live. The highlights were undoubtedly meeting Mandy at the SPA and the big names I met: Sir Patrick Moore and Brian May (yes, THAT Brian May - he is an expert on interplanetary dust).

Check out below photos from the weekend, including meeting Brian and Patrick. I had to leave before I was able to get a shot with Brian Cox, but I did get a book signed for my son.



Amazingly, for an astronomer who has been at it for around 25 years this was my first AstroFest. It was a pretty frantic weekend but well worth it. It was great to see how much time these men had for the fans, particularly Patrick, whose health is making meets and greets like this prohibitive. I am the only person in my school generation I know of who stayed up late to watch The Sky At Night so this man is a hero of mine, and after reading his autobiography I found him to be a remarkable man in many ways, not just astronomy. Brian May was so gracious and had so much time for us geeks who are not lucky enough to have been in one of the greatest bands of all time.

Now we're back to work, and we're every excited about the future. check out our latest video about eclipses, made after several requests from Facebookers and parents.