Saturday’s Basic Astronomy day was a joint venture between Highworth Night Sky Facebook group and Swindon Stargazers. Held at the Highworth Community Centre we invited people to come along to see the exhibits which included Robin’s impressive collection of eyepieces, a show of meteorites and a large selection of telescopes ranging from basic starter scopes to the highly technical set ups used for astro imaging.

On a personal note, I finally got to see the Sun through an H-Alpha telescope (Thanks Owen).

One of the highlights of the day was that we had quite a few telescopes brought in by visitors asking for advice on how to set them up who then went away happy, being able to get the most out of their equipment for the first time.

All in all, it was a great day with far more visitors than I expected and a huge thanks goes to everyone who contributed to make our first joint outreach venture such a success, especially Robin, Hilary, Damian and Owen who put in a lot of hours to make it work. I have already received numerous requests for another one in the autumn to hopefully include some stargazing, so heres to the next one!

Paul Newton-Smith (Organiser)