Whitby & District Astronomical Society

There surely cannot have been that many occasions in which Paul has made the journey up to Whitby in such fine conditions, more akin to summer than spring. It was a pleasure not having to battle wind, rain, snow... plague of locusts, etc which often seems to coincide with Paul’s appearance at the Museum.

A fine evening then, and a great turn out for Paul’s presentation - 40 in fact were seated in the Normanby room, which I know Paul really appreciated, as do we, and it was nice to see so many members. Although a departure from ‘Images of the Universe’ series, Paul’s talk still followed the ‘images’ format, but instead of looking out to the universe at large, the Earth-Moon system was itself the focus of attention, with ‘Images of the Earth’.

Paul’s personal choice of 10 key or iconic images, depicting the earth- moon system from various locations within our solar system, each accompanied by an explanation and augmented with further sub-images. The images ranged from ‘The Pale Blue Dot’; Earth shine; Marble Earth, Goodbye Earth, Hello Earth, Earth at Night, Earth from the Red planet and various Earth-Moon compositions. Paul’s enthusiasm for his subject matter, whatever topic, is infectious, and the time seemed to fly by.

The home-made refreshments were as ever delicious, hardly a morsel left, with Paul putting his doggy bag (as instructed ) to good use for his journey home.  We say it every year, but Paul’s talks are ‘infotainment’ of the highest calibre, thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Many thanks to Pam for the food, Rosemary, for organising the Museum room etc, Rosy (who had made the journey over from Kirbymoorside especially to see Paul) and who ably assisted in the kitchen along with my good lady wife, who was locked in the ‘cupboard kitchen’ and not allowed out until all the washing up had been done!

To cap the evening off in fine style, on venturing outside, a quite spectacular conjunction of the crescent moon (in earth shine) Venus and Aldebaran, greeted us, quite superb. Not surprising then, that many a camera phone was produced, and if you can send in any results (either to Mark or via the web site) that would be great.