lunartic wrote:

Is Sheany Morris your brother then, Seanie?

I know! They spelled it that way too in the first video (episode 40) a few weeks back. AND, I corrected them on it at COSMOS and all! I know, we were also called 'Midlands Astronomy Ireland' (go on, roll your eyes), but our logo was still shown in great prominence in the piece. One thing I was hoping that would have been included in my own interview was acknowledging Ktec Telescopes (www.ktectelescopes.ie) as our main sponsor and primary retailer for the event. Unfortunately, they omitted this.

Seanie.

So next year is April 15-17. There will be a just past 1st quarter moon in the sky until the small hours, it will be joined by Mercury and Jupiter in the evening sky. Saturn and Mars will join the party after midnight.

That is interesting, Neill. A Moon in the sky at Cosmos. I definitely will be bringing my Antonin Rukl's Atlas of the Moon.

It has brilliant maps in it.

Aubrey.

That weekend was chosen for a number of reasons. Neill got most of them. Plus, it's nestled between 2 bank holiday weekends (2 weeks apart either side). We usually try to have it close to when there's no Moon, but we also considered that maybe a 1st Quarter Moon might not be so bad (for once), as we hope more members of the public will attend, and having an easily accessible target like the Moon on show might encourage observing.

There will possibly be some of us fuming at the fact we have our Moon in the evening sky, but I for one will certainly not mind. The Dublin Sidewalk Astronomers very regularly study the Moon at Sandymount every month, and a lot of people stop by and are amazed by the spectacular sight of all the craters, mountains, rilles and a whole host of other extra goodies.

Aubrey.

The moon would only interfer with the deep sky observers looking for the really faint fuzzies and guys looking to take hours of exposures of the deep sky objects. The site does suffer from light pollution issues on 2 sides (North & West), so probably it is not suitable to do either of the above. Its perfect for planetary observing and the brighter deep sky objects. The observing at COSMOS is an add on to the talks etc rather than the central focus, i.e. down in the Kerry party in August. The event is a great tool for MAC to get more potential members, i.e. the use of Irish TV and people love looking at the moon!

Want a job on the MAC committee, Neill!