A major exhibition collated by Deirdre Kelleghan will launch at Birr Castle, County Offaly. Entitled "In the Footsteps of Galileo", it will feature drawings and sketches of the Moon created by Irish, American, and many more children along with lunar, solar, planetary, and deep sky sketches made by well known observers and artists such as Sir Patrick Moore, Sally Russell, Jeremy Perez, Sue French, Dan Davis, Jeff Young and many more.
The exhibition opens on 18 September at 6pm. All Welcome
Dr Carolina Odman - International Program Manager for UNAWE ie Universe Awareness for Young Children will formally open the exhibition and give a talk on the work of UNAWE.
Deirdre Kelleghan sent me a few words from Br Guy Consolmagno about the exhibition. "I feel very honored that he took the time to write about it shortly after his visit to Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork", said Deirdre.
"Back in the days when professional astronomers observed primarily with their own eyes at the telescope, one would talk about the "personal equation" of each astronomer. Deirdre Kelleghan's exhibit, collecting amateur astronomical sketches, has re-introduced the "personal" into the equation.
The person at the eyepiece, drawing by hand, unites the beautiful whispers of light from the sky with their own soul and spirit, their own unique human choice of what they draw and how they draw it. Even drawings of the same object, such as lunar craters (or, in one example shown here, a faint nebula) will be as different as the artists who draw them.
And this exercise in drawing, like the ability to look through a telescope in the first place, is not limited merely to the expert. A number of these drawings show that wonderful representations of things seen in a telescope can be produced even by people with little or no formal training. Astronomy is for everyone; so is drawing the objects that astronomy shows us.
At a time when a lot of effort, amateur as well as professional, is put into the recording of astronomical objects with the latest CCD and computer equipment, this exhibit reminds us of the person who is still the center of astronomy done for the love of the sky."
Guy Consolmagno SJ