h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes indeed, but I think we'll have to be up early to catch a glimpse of Venus that day I'm afraid, . Luckily there's a fairly good local horizon view from a nearby hill so it'll be worth a try.

Poor old Pioneer has got a two million 'year' journey ahead of it to the next star. Somewhere around Aldeberan apparently. That's a long way from home.
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Ah Deke. How you would have loved the talk at my local astronomy club last night. http://www.cleethorpesastronomy.org.uk/

It was one of our original members (Peter Rea) who gave a talk on Apollo 16, complete with pictures of the landing sites & astronauts on the moon. He even had 3-D glasses for us to see the depth of the craters. I was blown away. He has seen a Saturn launch and met one of the astronauts who walked on the moon (whose name escapes me now)

In the Q&A afterwards, he told us that all the images taken by the astronauts are online at http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html



Next year he's coming back to talk about Apollo 17.

Sounds like a really active society you’ve got there. I’d have loved to hear that talk. In fact I once nearly got to a talk by John Young, Apollo 16’s commander. That was a few years ago when he came to Britain, but it was already oversubscribed and I missed out.

Funnily enough I almost got the sack from my (then) job during the Apollo 16 mission, through taking a bit too much time off to watch the transmissions. I would have given almost anything to have gone to see a live Saturn launch. I eventually made a second best with a Shuttle launch though. I always watched the later Discovery missions a bit closer after that.

I haven’t been sky watching much lately due to one thing and another, so the scope’s had a bit of a rest. When it does come out it’s usually trained on the Moon. It was the Moon missions that really set off my interest in the Moon. In particular I remember being blown away when I saw the first movie film from Apollo 8 as it orbited the Moon and shot the ground track.

We’ve had some lovely clear nights lately so I guess I’m gonna have to get the scope out for the bi-annual look at Mars and coming up Saturn. It might have to get a bit warmer first though.