Imagine if you will…

endless, consuming darkness. Out of this darkness come pinpricks of light, growing ever brighter, ever bigger. Music, quiet at first but with increasing drama and volume adds to the overall effect.

I think this weekend I have mostly done sleeping! I didn’t wake until about 930am yesterday, was exhaused and fast asleep by 1130pm and slept right through til gone 9am this morning. 😳

We moved the chicken run this morning, the cockerel is a fine looking bird, getting ever more cocky and proud and the two hens are looking like they may just lay sometime soon with their combs reddening. Can’t wait for our first home-laid egg :). Ady and the children stayed out in the garden and then it didn’t seem to be long before it was lunchtime. Davies and Scarlett went back out into the garden again straight after lunch and at about 2pm we headed off to Chichester to the Planetarium. On the way we listened to Peter and the Wolf followed by a Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra – this particular version is narrated by Sean Connery which utterly distracts me as I feel the need to repeat most of the things he says in a poor imitation of his accent – the way he says ‘brass’ particularly makes me want to do this :lol:.

As part of our ‘places to go in 2008 programme’ I’d booked tickets to todays show Stars on frosty nights. We were very enthusiastically greeted and told they had a full house today (the star theatre seats 100 people) and had time for a quick look around the downstairs before it was time to take our seats. I imagine for people very interested in astonomy it is an amazing place, with many posters and models, a very full library, a computer room with all sorts of information being recorded and an amazingly good wax model of Patrick Moore on show. It is fairly ‘low tech’ in terms of our over inflated expectations of museums really, with no buttons to press or big showy interactive displays but is staffed by volunteers who are among the most passionate people I have met, desperate to share their knowledge and experience with anyone who will listen :).

The seats are old jumbo jet chairs, in blocks of three with reclining buttons and old ashtrays still in the arms, arranged around a projector which beams the images onto a 10 metre dome above your heads. The show we saw today was possibly not the very best introduction for children, being fairly intense and very information heavy with technical terms aplenty and possibly some previous knowledge of stars assumed. All the shows are billed as suitable for children aged 6 plus although I would have thought 10 plus would be more accurate for most children. Davies sat transfixed for the whole thing but Scarlett struggled after the first half an hour as I imagined a lot of what was being said was simply way beyond her comprehension of language let alone subject matter. Ady and I found it utterly fascinating though and I think with a bit of pre-visit preparation Scarlett would be happy to give it another go on a topic she was more interested in before she got there so the commentary, pitched at intelligent adult level, would be something she could zone out from and just enjoy the pictures.

We drove home, chatting about some of the stuff we’d seen and looking at the rather magnificent sunset tonight. One of the things talked about at the show was the space station being visible for the next few evenings as it flies overhead, along with Mars and Saturn also visible and the other constellations most clear in the night sky at this time of year. We got in and Ady finished up cooking dinner so we sat down to a lovely slow roasted roast lamb before bundling up warm and dashing out into the garden at the appointed time to see the space station. I am not sure whether we were looking in the wrong place or whether there were just so many planes in the sky that we failed to identify it apart from them but we didn’t spot anything we could claim as it. We did see at least 20 planes flying overheard at different heights and the moon with a very slim crescent and the dark side of the moon sillhouette created by ‘earthshine’. Davies then staggered me rather by demonstrating just how much everything had gone in at the Planetarium by pointing out Orion’s belt, followed by the rest of him, then the hare then the dogstar 😯 all correctly names and indeed correctly identified. We looked hard for Mars or Saturn but had no luck. The children and I had already hopped over our garden wall to get a better view of the lower sky unobscured by our house but couldn’t manage it so we decided to drive to the beach for a better view. We discussed the downs versus the beach and Davies decided the beach would have less light pollution as the downs would mean we were overlooking towns and cities so would have loads 😯 again!

We got out of the car at the beach and spotted various other constellations before deciding that we really need to travel somewhere properly dark so we can stargaze efficiently. Also that we need a bit more practise to identify everything with confidence. I was so impressed with how much Davies had taken in and actually Scarlett was really quite enthusiastic and full of snippets of stuff she’d remember too, so I take great heart that these things always yield far greater than you’d first realised. We came home through Shoreham Airport and then children had hot chocolate and a couple of chapters of The Aardvark who wasn’t sure before it was bedtime for Davies and Scarlett and Lost time for me :). The plan is to spot the space station tomorrow and maybe learn a bit more about stars and night skies along the way. I’m quite tempted to book another show though :).