Talk Delivered - PGL Beyond Colleagues

As we stumble into the doldrums that is the UK Summer where rain and cloud don't feature as much, we face decreasing amounts of usable light at sensible hours at night.  In fact, we have lost true astronomical darkness for a while, and any observing is restricted to a couple of the latest/earliest hours of each day.  As much as I would like one, I don't own an HA scope, so I'm restricted to white light observing during the day and so getting my astronomy fix is tricky at this time of year.  One way of getting that fix though is by talking about it, and spreading some knowledge and wonder.

It's been an ambition of mine to do a talk in my place of work for a number of years.  A few of my colleagues have always been very kind and inquisitive of the hobby and have encouraged me to do this when I have mentioned the idea.  A few weeks ago, I started thinking about it again.  I already had the talk prepared because I could use the same one I put together for the last group I spoke to last year.  It just needed a bit of tweaking for relevance, but other than that, it was all there.  The only way this was going to happen was to post something public about it, and so I did just that.  We have an internal community channel in work that can be used as a sort of notice board.  I wrote the text at home and then posted it when I went to work the next day.  Job done.  I was committed.

In the week or so that followed, I was surprised at the reaction it got, and dare I say, slightly encouraged.  I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of numbers of people who would come.  Though around 30 people expressed an interest, I knew that not all of them would make it, and some just wouldn't bother.

On the night, around 10 people turned up, which was really pleasing.  It was so nice to see these people had an interest in my hobby, in space, in science and in what I had to say.  As well as the talk, I also took in some pieces of equipment to use as kind of a show and tell.  I expect it might have been the first time some of the people in the room had actually seen a telescope.  Big thanks to Finola for providing the second and third photos below.  I totally forgot to ask people to take any!

Since holding the talk, a couple of other people have come forward to apologise for missing it, but I think that there is enough of an interest there for me to do another one later in the year.  The talk I gave looked mostly at solar, lunar and deep space objects as most of it was based around my own images.  What I don't haven't done much of is planetary imaging, so we actually spoke very little about the solar system.  This will probably be the topic for the next talk, and my intention will be to hold it in early autumn when we have some good dark skies again.  This will also allow me to do a mini sky guide outside after the talk has finished, although I need to research a little into where the best place for me to do that will be.

Another fantastic outcome of the talk was a colleague expressing a deep interest into starting astrophotography himself.  This is amazing, and I look forward to helping him get to grips with the hobby.

If you're in my area and interested in hearing more about the hobby and would like me to talk to your group or club, please get in touch.  I'd love to!