Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Surprising interest

Over the years, I've participated in many a public astronomy night, where we we would take our telescopes and set up for public viewing. Invariably, everyone attending was impressed, sometimes awestruck, often incredulous as to the things one can see through a telescope. In my mind, the people who show up at these events always have a keen interest in astronomy, and they know it. They make the effort to come. Conversely, I thought until now that people who didn't show did not have that kind of curiosity, or didn't think of it as being important, if they had heard about the event.

Since I started my blog just a little over a month ago, I think that there are not many readers of it around. Considering that, a fair percentage of comments come back to me. To my surprise, my post about the recent lunar eclipse brought some responses which make me think that many people would like to know more about what can be seen "up there", without having any specialist knowledge in that regard.

There are some easy ways to do these things yourself - without any special equipment. Naked-eye astronomy, astronomy using binoculars, basic cameras.... one can do a lot in that regard. If there is enough interest, I can occasionally do a post about this.