Ireland's largest gathering of Amateur Astronomers took place at 8:00pm on Saturday Aug 26.  

Nearly 400 people travelled to the highest village in Ireland - Roundwood, Co. Wicklow for Astronomy Ireland's bi- annual fundraising Star-B-Q event.  Roundwood has by now become the spiritual home of this fantastic event.

This year the event was professionally catered by Brian Beattie and his team of The Caterers www.thecaterers.ie .  He really did an excellent job and the food was mouth wateringly good.  It was cooked on charcoal barbeques and lots of people commented to me on the lovely flavour this produced.  I have to agree.

The first talk was given by Astronomy Ireland Chairman, David Moore was at 8:30pm.  This was a David's very popular lecture on the Universe.  This was followed by a terrific lecture by Emlyn Jones with lots of animation and sound.  The final talk of the night was by Emmet Mordaunt.  Emmet gave a very interesting and topical lecture on what constitutes a planet.  The subject is very topical at the moment following Pluto's demotion to the status of Dwarf Planet.

While the lectures were happening inside there was also a lot happening outside. Eamonn O'Fearchain gave an imaging display and organised a quiz.  Tony Ryan gave his excellent naked eye "Walk though the Heavens" when gaps occurred in the clouds.  Ten telescopes lined up on the football pitch peered through clear patchs in the clouds when they occured.  Skies were partly clear and a fair amount of
observing was done. Everyone got to see the I.S.S. as the sky was clear when it flew over.  Indeed later on when a lot of people had already gone conditions improved considerably.

Hungry Star-B-Qers	Smoke and smell of the barbeque
Robert and Carl with Carl's 14" Celestron	David Moore's Lecture
Busy Cooking	Emmet Mordaunt on Planets
Dave Grennan tweeks the 21"	Emlyn Jones enthralls the crowd