At a busy meeting on Wednesday 21st of January we were delighted to first welcome Rosalind Crowther,who is the present warden at Sackville College. Our Christmas mince pie morning in December raised over £400 which is traditionally donated to Sackville College. It was gratefully received by Rosalind, who also commented on the delightful mince pies made by Angela and how to make Christmas gifts and decoration supplied by Helen.
Having had to to cancel Steve Pond’s talk a couple of weeks ago due to inclement weather it was with great pleasure that we greeted him at our speaker meeting on Wednesday. He was introduced as East Grinstead’s expert on night sky! Although he himself modestly denied this it was obvious from the rest of the evening how knowledgeable he was, which had all been self taught, and how he enjoyed sharing this knowledge, both with us and the wider community of East Grinstead. The night’s talk was based around the planet Jupiter as it is presently at its closest point to the Earth and it is obvious, on a clear night, for anybody to see. Having said that it is still 395,000,000 miles away, a figure which is difficult to comprehend.
During the evening we learnt many interesting facts with just a few of them as follows. Jupiter‘s equatorial diameter is approximately 11.2 times that of the earth.
The earth takes 24 hours to rotate round the Sun whereas Jupiter takes approximately nine hours and 55 minutes.
You can fit approximately 1340 earths in Jupiter.
These sound like good facts for a pub quiz!!
At the end of the evening when Steve was answering questions, he told us that what he enjoyed most was using the naked eye to further for his love of astronomy, although he appreciated the extra that the telescope could give. His enthusiasm for the subject dated back to the first Apollo mission to the moon. Finally the advice he gave to us so if we were interested in looking at the stars was to “take your time and learn your rhythm.” This is something that several of us might do!