20th Anniversary

We proudly celebrated bringing Astronomy to the public for 20 years!

Our 20th Anniversary!

Sunday 7th October was an early morning start for the BAS committee, helpers and vendors that needed to set up for our BAS 20th Anniversary Celebration Event at Bedford School. The weather was kind if overcast and one of the first on the scene were a group of men from Astrium to set up the blow-up 5th scale model of an Ariane 5 rocket. Others from their team put up two exhibitions, one in the theatre and another in the room alongside the vendors to distribute information leaflets and other goodies. They also ran some DVDs for everyone to watch throughout the day.

All the vendors set up very attractive stands and reported lively trade throughout the day. They were Green Witch, David Bryant's Space Station, Astroparts, Aurora Books, Nik Syzmanek and The BAA who also, together with Starry Night, contributed raffle prizes. The very pleased winner of the first prize of a meteorite in the raffle was Peter Hudson and ironically Darren's son Andrew won the cake that had been baked by his mother. She said that he didn't even like fruit cake so maybe he will let us have a slice at the next meeting with our tea and coffee?

The speakers, Robin Catchpole, Paul Money, Nik Syzmanek, Andy Green and Carl Warren all performed very well and there was approximately 100 people in the audience who showed their appreciation of them. In fact I have been receiving many emails from visitors, BAS members and the vendors saying what a good time they all had and praised the organisation, the well balanced lecture programme, variety of vendors and not least the quality of the School's catering.

The biggest thanks should go to Darren Jehan for organising the whole event together with Linton Guise and Bedford School for all the facilities, for without them the celebration could not have taken place on this scale and with such success. I would also like to thank the rest of my colleagues on the BAS committee for all the work they put in.

The committee were extremely grateful for all the help that was given on the day by BAS members Tracy Jehan, Gilly Ashwell, Kevin Quigg, Graham Watkins and Dave Eagle. In addition Paul Money let us have some copies of his book 'Night Scenes 2008' to sell at £5 each and these together with our 20th Anniversary BAS commemorative mugs at £4 sold well. We all look forward to the next event.
Peter Ashwell BAS Publications Editor