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Scilly takes part in Big Star Count 2012On Thursday 26th January, the Isles of Scilly Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Unit and the Council of the Isles of Scilly’s Lifelong Learning team organized an ‘Astronomy Walk for Wellbeing’. We were joined by local astronomers Steve Sims and Tom Scott, who were eager to brave the cold night air to share their knowledge of Scilly’s dark night skies with the group. We walked to Buzza Tower, a well known landmark that sits above Hugh Town, St Mary’s. Here we admired the planets Jupiter (along with its four visible Moons: Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io) as well as Venus the closest of the Planets in our Solar System to Earth. We also observed hundreds of stars made visible through the use of telescopes and binoculars. We looked at the Plough constellation, and followed this to Polaris (the North Star 434 light years from Earth). Pleiades, a hot blue, and extremely luminous star cluster where stars are born, commonly known as the ‘Seven Sisters’, was also visible at the top of the visible celestial sphere. The Great Nebula in Orion was also visible through the telescope and is an area of intense star formation about 1400 light years away from Earth and has a width of 24 light years. The group managed to count 27 stars, with the naked eye, within the constellation Orion for Big Star Count 2012, which is a fantastic result! Elsewhere in Scilly we received a record of over 30 stars within Orion (this was out at Longstone and at a dark location in Hugh Town). Thanks to all who took part in Big Star Count 2012! CPRE will soon publish the results of Star Count 2012, these will also be available on the AONB website. This is the first year that Scilly has taken part in the Big Star Count, so it will be interesting to compare our dark night skies with those elsewhere in the UK. Websites of interest:
Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)
