The last four days of 10DA
The story comes to an end. After ten excellent days the time has come to close the event with the FIFTIETH day of astronomy in Daruvar.
Monday, 31. March 2014. u 22:28 sati 10 Days of Astronomy 2014
Day seven (Thursday)
At 5 o’clock in the afternoon Professor Josip Prević and Tonka Vacka, a student, conducted a workshop in Vladimir Nazor Elementary school. The workshop theme was The Big Bang Theory. To explain it to the students they needed twenty balloons, ten rulers and, of course, a pair of strong lungs. Through blowing up balloons with marked dots on them representing galaxies the students understood the expanding of the universe.
Attentive listeners
The hall of Hrvatski dom was packed to capacity at 7 o’clock. For the fifth time in Daruvar, Korado Korlević, a man who needs no introduction, held a lecture called Star Trek – The Next 2, 75 Million Years. Korado told us about the collapse of civilizations and cultures such as the Egyptian, Hellenistic and Mayan civilizations, which collapsed after flourishing, as well as the reason for it.
Korado Korlević
He told us about the possible scenarios for our civilization’s imminent collapse. We learned about the possibilities of man’s journey into outer space, through the building of enormous spaceships in Earth’s orbit from asteroid material and the printing of space craft parts. These crafts would be generation starships regardless of the engine type. Due to its pessimistic view of our civilization’s prospects the lecture was slightly depressing (to which Korado replied he’s carried out even darker ones) but a very long applause and a thorough post-lecture Q&A made it one of the lengthiest and most interesting lectures conducted. (I am currently in the process of arranging a group therapy session as we are all depressed upon hearing the civilization will end no later than 2030).
Day eight (Friday)
My day started exceedingly well as I learned at 9 in the morning that Marino was very ill and unsure whether to come at all (sarcasm intended). I talked him into coming after promising to have the emergency medical services number ready and so Marino collected Gregor in Rijeka and they set out to Daruvar together, arriving in time to start the lecture at 7 pm.
Marino and Gregor
Marino Tumpić announced Gregor Srdoč’s lecture called In Search of Variable Stars. We had the opportunity to learn about the strange stars that ‘live’ in our universe and that Gregor has discovered more than 4000 variable stars so far. If, using the data available on the internet, each of us found a variable star, we would all be famous for discovering a star in the universe.
Day nine (Saturday)
10 am – the day started with the Astro Expo exhibition. Apart from participants who only submitted their equipment for exhibition there were also those who were selling theirs.
Sandrino's telescope models
The students of Daruvar Technical School offered two mean robots they designed themselves for display, Sandrino offered his many telescope models for sale, Nenad showed us his aircraft model kits and there were also many telescopes and parts of equipment exhibited. We are happy with our very first exhibition as we even managed to sell some merchandise.
Dag sets up his booth
5 pm – A visit to Daruvar’s brewery, the oldest brewery in the Balkans, operating in the same place since its inception. Here Krešo talked to us about beer as dotingly as we do about stars. Naturally, we tasted Daruvar beer while visiting the manufacturing systems.
Thank you Krešo for what we learned about beer
7 pm – This year’s final lecture was held by our youngest lecturer, Sandrino Požežanac, a high school student from Virovitica. This was Sandrino’s third 10DA lecture, so everybody in Daruvar and all our amateur astronomers already knew him well and expected an interesting lesson.
Sandrino
His topic this year was The Mythology of the Constellations. We learned all there is to know about Perseus the warrior and his flying sandals; Andromeda and her parents, Cassiopeia and Cepheus; the great hunter Orion and his hunting dogs, one of which was Sirius; Scorpio, who hunts Orion across the sky and has cost him his life by stinging him in his heel, and how much of all this is Zeus’s fault, as he was famously more vindictive and promiscuous than divine.
Even before Sandrino concluded with his lecture telescopes were set up in the square and pointed towards the night sky. Street lighting was turned off during the annual Earth Hour event in which over 50 other Croatian cities participated as well. Citizens of Daruvar were able to look through a telescope at Jupiter, his stripes and his Great Red Spot. Just as the town was about to turn the lights back on Mars emerged over the roofs of buildings and asked to have a brief look cast at him as well. Those interested could direct their questions to Saša (Beorn), Ivan from Koprivnica, our society’s Alek and many other amateur astronomers present who were eager to share their knowledge about the universe.
Ivan from Koprivnica (gazing at Jupiter and its moons)
Active participants of the Zvjezdarnica.com forum couldn’t resist the gorgeous night sky revealed in its full glory – they quickly went to Petrov vrh not far from Daruvar to photograph stellar objects that lured them from infinity. The rest of us went from astronomers to gastronomers and enjoyed the banquet arranged to mark the last evening of 10DA. We spent the early evening hours together. All of those present from Zagreb, Rijeka, Vidulini, Omišalj, Koprivnica, Varaždin, Čakovec and perhaps other places I forgot to mention and apologize for, have promised to meet us again next year at the sixth Ten Days of Astronomy in Daruvar.
Deep meditation after supper
Deep meditation after supper
Day FIFTY (Sunday)
6 pm – An overview of 10DA called Man In Space – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow… was held by the members of our Kumova slama astronomical society along with our faithful friends from Virovitica, Danijel and Sandrino.
Ljubica and Tanja
The topic, naturally, were the 10DA we thoroughly analyzed together. We tried to identify the things we could have improved and we concluded that the sixth 10DA were going to be even better.
