Starstruck for five decades in open day
DERBY and District Astronomical Society is celebrating its 50th anniversary tomorrow with an Open Day at the Friends’ Meeting House on St Helen’s Street.
The society was originally formed in 1974 when Jane Kirk placed an advert in the Derby Telegraph looking for “like-minded people” interested in astronomy.
The club has “evolved” says Secretary Brian Dodson, and it even still has some of its original members from 50 years ago.
“It’s going to be a great event with lots of different things going on” said Brian. “We’ve got a moon globe which has been signed by various astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and other prominent people in the field, such as Sir Patrick Moore.
“We’ve also got the schematics and records of Kenneth Stevens, who back in the 40s and 50s, built his own radio astronomy dish [in Littleover] at the same time they were building Jodrell Bank.
“So I’ll be taking that, along with his frequency records tracking Sputnik and Apollo 11 - we believe he was actually the first person to map the Milky Way in radio waves, so he was actually a very prominent amateur scientist.”
For those intrigued in astronomy, the open day will be offering halfprice membership. There will also be talks held throughout the day from DDAS and guest speakers and the event is free to attend.
“It’s been 15 years since I first joined”, said Brian, “and it’s definitely evolved from the early days where we’d meet just once a month.
“To me, there’s nothing better than going out on a dark, clear night and looking up and seeing the universe as we see it, and then just thinking ‘I wonder’.”
The open day will be held on Saturday, 10am to 4pm.