European AstroFest 2024 Exhibition

[Graeme1858]

Is anybody (UK only (probably)) going to the European AstroFest 2024 Exhibition at the Kensington Conference and Events Centre, London this weekend.

If so, I'll see you there, I just booked my tickets!

Graeme

[KingClinton]

That sounds like some good old fashioned fun!
Remember, pics or it didn't happen!

[Greenman]

Ah, I would but my grandson is with us this weekend and the missus would not apprciate me disappearing.

[Graeme1858]

Found out about the European AstroFeastin a post on X (Twitter) earlier this week by Cath Adams who is President of Wolverhampton Astronomical Society and works for The Society for Popular Astronomy, one of the Exhibition contributors. So I followed Cath on X and booked a ticket.

The train up to London was full of people snoozing or looking at their mobile phones. I sat gazing out the window eagerly looking for trackside electrification infrastructure feeling glad to have retired but intrigued how it still holds a fascination for me!

The Exhibition was excellent I spent the morning looking round the stands stopping and chatting to the people on most of them. I met some great people, Dr Robert Massey, told him I was a big fan of the RAS Podcast. Greg Smye-Rumsby on the Astronomy Now stand and signed up for a subscription (great price, great additional free gifts!) Had a good chat with the Widescreen Centre about hypertuning my CGX and bought a new red torch (9 LEDs!). Had a good chat with 365 Astronomy about the Eagle mini PC and with the University of Lancaster about online courses. Bought a Moon poster from the British Astronomical Association stand to put on my observatory wall. Then I bumped into Cath Adams on the Society for Popular Astronomy stand and told her that she was the reason I was there! She returned the X follow favour!

I spent quite a while looking at the Astrophotography Competition finalists' entries, some excellent images. One mosaic of the Alnitak area and M42, similar to a post here on TSS!

In the afternoon I listened to an excellent talk on Building your own Cosmic Ray detector, might very well get into that if the clouds here don’t clear up soon! The idea is a lot simpler than I realized, Cosmic rays hit the atmosphere and decay into Muons which are very short lived but can be detected by the time they reach ground level due to their relativistic speed! Then an excellent talk on binary stars and an excellent talk on the SKA Observatory. Sat next to and had a good chat with a fellow Graham!

The empty seats were pre start of talk. It was packed out when the talks started!

I had a train seat booked for 18:10 so I had to miss the talk on the JWST. Next time I’m just going to turn up at the station and buy a ticket and not miss anything!
An excellent day out.

Graeme

[KingClinton]

You can colour me green with envy!
I have followed Cath for some time now, great person with a genuine love of the night sky.
Interesting to hear that you learned more about the SKA project, it's really kicking off now and has already had major spin-offs for the communities around them and science in South Africa in general. The early science coming from the project so far has been amazing!
Now, next year please remember to invite someone rom the Common Wealth to join you(All expenses of course!), say maybe someone from a country right at the southern tip of Africa!

Thanks for the report back!