Black hole man can stargaze in road

ONE of Britain's top names in astronomy will be in Sark next week for the Sark Astronomy Society's 'Mini-Starfest'.

Dr Marek Kukula is the Public Astronomer at the Royal Astronomy Greenwich and among other things is a black hole specialist.

The Mini-Starfest, which follows a similar event last October – the first by the society and a direct result of Sark attaining the status of being the world's first dark sky island – is being held on the Saturday and the Sunday.

Dr Kukula, who was appointed Public Astronomer in August 2008, will be giving a lecture at the Island Hall on the Saturday entitled A Tour of the Universe and will host a lunch at Stocks Hotel the following day.

His lecture will be followed by the showing of a DVD of the Houston Symphony Orchestra playing The Planets Suite, with NASA fly-by pictures. There will also be an opportunity to do some stargazing – if the weather behaves itself – after a buffet supper at Hathaways; probably the only time Dr Kukula, with all his experience of astronomy, will be able to do so while standing in the middle of a main road without fear of getting run over.

The programme seems to me to be a credit to the Sark society which, since the island was awarded Dark Sky status, has done more than its fair share of promoting one of the pleasures of living and visiting here – the fact that there is little in the way of what is termed light pollution, principally because of the absence of street lights and the considerable cost of electricity.

*

Since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election of conseillers to the revamped Chief Pleas, when employees of SEM lost their jobs, there has been repetitive comment about what happened to the offer from an anonymous benefactor of £50,000 to help those out of work.

I don't know much about it because I was away on holiday at the time and when I returned the hoo-ha had all but died down and things were pretty much as they were when I left.

However, on seeing Charles Maitland – chairman of Chief Pleas' General Purposes and Advisory Committee and of La Seigneurie Gardens Trust – the other morning, I asked him what had happened to the money.

'We decided to repair the Seigneural dovecot with the funds and employed a local builder – the other found employment elsewhere – for several weeks until he returned to work for SEM.

'There was no cheque for £50,000 and I do not know whether the Island Hall trustees and the douzaine received their share, or, if they did, what they did with their funds. Our donor was happy to have any money left over from his gift used in the Hathaways restoration and the setting up of the gardens trust, which I was funding at the time.'

*The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.