If your astro soc is thinking of doing something like this, then I strongly recommend it.

I spent all weekend on our stand at Herstmonceux. It was a great opportunity to meet the public and let them know about CADSAS and it’s forthcoming meetings. Good local promotion and awareness building.

But just as important was meeting other local astronomy societies, getting to know some of their key people and generally “joining the local astro club community”.

Also, it provided a great opportunity to make a couple of (very) short videos for YouTube.com (above and below)

All it needed was a simple camcorder and a tripod. You should do the same for your club or society.

Don’t get put-off by thoughts of fancy video equipment.

Surely, the quality is not like the BBC. But in spite of the wind and excessive background noise, IT WORKS to help show people what you are doing.

A quick video like this, gives you something you can show to others. And it helps people find your society through the search engines.

Highly recommended!

This 22.5 inch reflector carried out important work on supernovae in the 1970’s and 80’s, operated at Burwash in Sussex, by it’s designer and builder Alan Young.

It then lay dismantled and unused for many years, before coming into the hands of Cranbrook School. Volunteers at their astronomy society have worked over the last couple of years to restore the telescope to operation.

The restoration project is now reaching the final stages.

Here’s a close-up picture of the recently fitted Crayford focusser with a custom motordrive. The arrangement will permit careful adjustment of the focus, from the observatory floor level. This is essential…

As you can see here, from this picture of the Mintron camera being fitted to the focusser. It is many feet up and requires an access tower to reach safely.

In the bottom picture, the declination axis drive is being adjusted.

The telescope is expected to be fully operational soon.