Our North East Kent Outreach Project is going from strength to strength, with loads of support from members and those that have telescopes bringing them along. Some members have commented that they are chatting with the public at the meeting and are passing on information they never realised they had. The Plan Is Working !! :-)
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Our first trip in October 2014, was a return visit to the 8th Ramsgate East Brownies, who we first met in July 2014. On our return on Friday 3rd October, we found the girls had been very busy as they had made their own simple sextants. This enabled them along with a compass to measure the position of the Stars in the sky and use that to identify what they were looking at.
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The next night, Saturday 4th October 2014, it was the turn of the Local Beavers Groups of the whole of Thanet. They were having a Space Themed Sleep Over at St George's School. There were nearly 80 Beavers altogether, between 7 and 10 years. We have a presentation that covers all the requirements for their 'Beavers Space Badge'.
The first half of the evening was taken up with the presentation, to teach them all they needed to earn their badge. Then we split into three groups to give them the opportunity to practice what they had learnt in the presentation. The groups were rotated so everyone got a turn of each activity.
The Evening ended with Questions and answers. With loads of questions from the Beavers, but many from us. The Beavers demonstrated very clearly that they had gained the knowledge required for their badges.
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On Sunday 5th October 2014 we attended a function at Trinity Church Hall, Cliftonville which was organized by the Thanet Community Support Partnership. Danny, George C ,Gill and myself (George W) put in an appearance on what turned out to be a very nice day, both weather wise and socially. There were many different organizations offering a wide variety of activities. It was extremely well organized, and some very nice refreshments were offered free of charge.
With a couple of telescopes set up and a wide variety of our astronomy literature arranged on the table, it was not long before we attracted interest. At the end of the day we had some more names to add to our contact list as well as a couple of requests to run some presentations in the new year. We were also asked if we would be interested in attending similar functions in the future.
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Tuesday 28 October our last outing of the month was to the Christchurch Wives Group, at Christ Church, Westgate Bay Av. Westgate-on-sea.
We gave a talk on the history of astronomy and a Q&A after the talk including a tour of our corner of the Milky Way, using our planetarium software. We looked at Jupiter and it's Moons, Saturn and one of it's Moon's Titan, our Moon, and several of the most beautiful Nebula, M42, M13, M1 etc.
