You could win a piece of the Moon or Mars, Sunday November 16

[OneOfOne]

The Mornington Peninsula Astronomical Society (MPAS) will have a small stand at this weekends Bentleigh Festival, Sunday 16 November from 9-4. We have organised this as a runup to the IYA next year to promote the society and astronomy in general. As an extra bonus, I was given a meteorite sample from the Moon and Mars courtesy of www.SpaceRocksUK.com (http://www.SpaceRocksUK.com) and have a couple of books ("Roving Mars" and "Why is Uranus upside down") etc to give away. Everyone who visits us will get a free raffle ticket to go into the drawer for the prizes. So if you live somewhere near Bentleigh (Victoria) drop in to see us. I will have my PST and 11kg iron meteorite there as well.

[OneOfOne]

I guess you could say we had an incredible response to our little stand at Bentleigh. Both meteorites were won by 10 year old boys who were extremely excited with their prizes. When we delivered one of them to his house, he literally ran toward us to get it!

I had my PST out for viewing the Sun, which did not co-operate and had nothing to show. I guess I showed 300 people the Sun, we gave out perhaps 150 membership forms for MPAS and had in total 500 or so people visit us. My 11kg meteorite was held by several hundred people, I just need to pick up some alcohol to give it a clean!

So if you have a local festival of sorts, you may like to enquire about doing something for IYA yourself! At the moment, I think we will be there again next year, but next time I think the Moon will be up as well and surely the Sun will have a couple of spots on it :sadeyes:

[Ric]

That's a great turnout Trevor, and what a great way to promote amateur astronomy.

Our astro society has a number of events planned as well for next year as well and if we get 500 people turn up that will be fantastic.

[OneOfOne]

Here are a few pictures from the day

Some of the crowd around our tables
Some kids filling out details for the raffle
People talking looking at my meteorite
The queue at the PST