What’s A Great Family Holiday Destination? The Universe Of Course!

Richard, Kelly, Jimmy and Ethan enjoying being our Airbnb guests, added to their stay highlights by experiencing our Astronomy Tours event. It was a highlight indeed. The night was clear and the weather comfortably mild making for excellent viewing conditions over a few hours.

Our Tour commenced with Venus which is currently high up in the sky at sunset and presents to us in a phase, like those of the Moon (this is due to Venus – and Mercury being inside Earth’s orbit around the Sun). Currently, Venus appears as a First Quarter where half of the planet is visible – quite spectacular.
… During the evening we zoomed out having superb clear views of Jupiter and Saturn culminating at the outer beacon of our Solar System, Neptune … Jupiter is 700 million kms. from Earth; Saturn double that … with Neptune more than triple Saturn’s distance again, from Earth. The light from Neptune takes over 4 hours(!) to reach us on Earth. For comparison, light from our Sun takes only 8 minutes to reach us. The Sun is therefore much, much closer to Earth, than Neptune.

Viewing highlights were numerous. Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae is high in the sky currently and always stuns the small group of observers with its size, brightness and half a million stars. (Any small wonder it is a stunner???)

Richard kindly added this comment on Airbnb in their stay review at The Honeysuckles …

“I’d also recommend doing the “Astro Tour” ….  Bruce knows his stuff and presents it really well for kids and adults alike, we had incredible views all over the cosmos”