Pete, Tim, Ray and Rich were involved in a Outreach event at Miltonduff Village Hall on Friday 31st March 2023 by invitation of the hall committee. We were made extremely welcome and several people came along to the telescope Event the following day.

The event involved Ray giving a talk entitled  “A Journey Back through  Space and Time (from my back garden)” This was a fascinating talk including many of Ray’s impressive collection of astro photographs which for this lecture included two particularly noteworthy ones. The first included quasars which were some 3.5, 7 and 10.2 Billion light years from Earth and the second one of the recent Aurora showing a range of colours  green, red and purple and the aurora towers.

Tim gave an astro basics talk on the letter M which included a discussion on Meteors, and Meteorites and differences a between them. For this lecture Tim had brought along some of his meteorite collection which fascinated  those present during the tea-break.

After the tea-break Pete introduced the audience to Stellarium giving us a guide through the night sky and pointing out some features such as the Horse Head Nebula that Ray had mentioned in his talk. This guide through Stellarium drew the event together and acted as a perfect summary to the night’s discussions.

During the event an Aurora was sighted but was not clear or spectacular owing the the cloud cover but it certainly contributed to the evening.

The Miltonduff Village Hall facility is excellent with a great Wifi signal and an easy to use and setup AV system, the Hall can accommodate up to 80 people seated.

If you know of any organisation who would like SIGMA to give a presentation on astronomy please let Pete or myself know and I am sure we can accommodate them.