Blogwonky

Today we began out multi-day, multi-destination trip to Parkes in the central west of NSW. On this trip I’m taking my telescope, which can be seen below packed in the car…

Our destination today was Katoomba. Here’s the video…

The tooth auction was ‘pulled’ by eBay last Thursday because they don’t allow trading in human body parts!

For this reason, the seller asked for one more set of bids by email (a silent aucton). I put in my bid yesterday and this morning I heard the result…

I am considering bidding on this item…

The world was scheduled to end today. If you’re reading this, then it didn’t.

Today, for the first time, I met some YouTubers. The occasion was a YouTube partner meeting in the Sydney Googleplex. I did not attend as I’m not a YouTube partner, but it was preceded by a mini-gathering at the Opera House which I attended with Yuko. Before we reached the SOH, Yuko had an encounter with some aboriginies…

We then met a whole bunch of people who I felt like I knew, although I’d never met them before…

Surprisingly, there was only one instance of planking…

Video (for dummies)…

In the evening we went out. But as we left the house, I met a wild animal and conducted an impromptu interview…

Meanwhile, at Lane Cove, the plaza is still in a state of chaos…

Tonight I attended my first ‘outreach’ event – a stargazing night at a primary school which I had organised. We had four telescopes and there were about thirty kids (grade 5) and a few parents. The kids having a ‘space’ themed sleepover and they are studying space and astronomy this term.

Unfortunately the Moon was gibbous and very bright (the teacher had chosen the date before consulting us), so we could only see some bright objects. Despite this, the kids were impressed by views of Saturn and the Moon.

Two of our members with their scopes

At the end of the evening the kids presented us with gifts and some huge thank-you cards which they had made themselves…

A rare conjunction of planets is occurring right now!

I got up before sunrise this morning to have a look…

Today we headed west to WeFa (Wentworth Falls) in the Blue Mountains. We stayed at a holiday house which I found on stayz.com.au. It was quite nice, but the web site ad had led me to believe that we would have a ‘house’ – ie. a whole house. In fact it turned out to be just two rooms at the front of a house. I think we got ripped off..

Yuko took over the desk…

Part of our mission is to try as many restaurants as possible. Tonight it was a Thai place in Leura. It was adequate…

Lane Cove council holds a festival each year – The Cameraygal Festival – named after the aboriginal people who lived here before we white people killed most of them and stole their land. The NSAS is hoping to hold a stargazing night as part of the festival and so tonight I went to a meeting at the council – an information night for event organisers. Free sushi was provided…

Much of the meeting was devoted to discussing everything that might go wrong and result in litigation. This included things like members of the public falling over and killing themselves etc. Of course our event will be held in the dark making it all the more dangerous.

Below is a teardrop banner which we can errect at our event to show that we are part of the festival…