Fantastic Evening!

We finally had our first clear sky evening, and WOW, what an incredible evening. After yet another GREAT meal, (will leave the kids to tell you all about the meals, and if you not one of the parents, well, I guess you'll just keep guessing!) we were off to use one of the big telescopes. The first thing Claudie showed us was the Scorpion constellation, and right at the bottom of that was the planet Mars. So we viewed Mars using the telescope, and that was amazing. We then went on to view other objects, which with the naked eye are just a dot, but with the telescope are galaxies or groups of stars. We viewed things that are between 8 000 to 12 000 light years away, which means;
9,740,000,000,000,000 x 12,000 (you do the math, and the answer is how far these stars and galaxies are in kilometers. good luck!) Claudie then showed us all the different constellations using a special green laser, and the kids were quite intrigued by it.
At the moment, the Earth is passing through a field full of spacial dust ( Huge ice boulders in our language) and so we had a fantastic display of shooting stars the whole evening.
Tonight the observatory will be open to the public, and the kids will be join in as they always have a special presentation of the sky on public nights, so it's something to look forward to and we hope the skies will be friendly again.
We are now off to the Volcano, and hoping that the weather will be great.
So catch you later!