The night sky

I couldn't let this week go by without saying a big thank you to Brian Phillips from nb Emily who arranged for an Astronomy Evening at the marina last Saturday night. Will Stewart of the South Cheshire Astronomy Society showed us how to look for the major constellations and I was amazed to discover the Russian Space Station is the size of a football pitch and visible to the naked eye. It was also pretty interesting to hear just how much junk is floating around out there and the fact that NASA claim they can track anything down to the size of an orange! Sadly the weather didn't play ball and it was a cloudly night so the star walk couldn't go ahead, but we did keep getting updates from the children who, having got a bit bored with the adult talk about stars, had gone outside to lay on the grass in the pitch black, and who kept running in to say "quick, quick the cloud just went and we saw the Big Dipper and the Teddy Bear!!"