In the first session slot on the last day of unsheffield, Martin’s giving an introduction to astronomy.

Surprisingly, the first slide in the presentation has a load of people camping – Martin explains that astronomy geeks have camps too… this one is starcamp.

Next, the wow-signal, seen 30 years  ago, so-called because the astronomer wrote ‘WOW’ in the margin of the data.  It’s a strong signal which has never been explained or seen again since – was it a rare natural phenomenon or evidence of life out there?

There’s some great on-line resources for astronomy – Galaxy Zoo, SETI@home and the Bradford Robotic telescope for example – educational resources that also happen to be lots of fun.

Martin then shows some slides of huge, planned telescopes and explains some of the engineering challenges that make these structures so expensive and difficult to create.

Next, we see a series of photographs of a black hole – or rather stars orbiting a black hole as you can’t actually see the black hole itself. Following that, a study done from the Hubble Space Telescope where Martin explains how the data gathered in studies is open sourced so that anyone can use it.

We then look at the Voyager spacecraft, still functioning to some degree and it’s work studying the Heliosphere, and how the recent Mars expeditions explored the idea and challenges of an interplanetary internet.

There’s plenty of free software out there for the astronomy geek – wikisky.org, Google Sky and kstar, even Google Earth has freely available updates that let you see where satellites are around the Earth.

As you might expect, there’s presence on social networks – http://twitter.com/dotastronomy is updated by the community with information about interesting astronomical events.

The Huyghens Lander landed on the surface of Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. Martin shows a video from the lander during it’s descent to the surface. It’s pretty awe-inspiring to think that this is actual footage from so far away.

There’s been a suspicious-looking package next to Martin through his presentation… now he takes the cover off to show his automated reflecting telescope. It can track stars, has a database of stars and the like, and can be hacked, one for the arduino crowd perhaps! Something liks that costs around £700.

Martin says that the best way to get started in astronomy is to check out the local astronomical societies. That way you can see what astronomy’s really all about before you invest lots of time and money.

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