What an evening it was!  About 33 Herschel girls were joined by another 50 or so pupils from Grove Primary and Western Province Prep for a celebration of 50 years of manned space flight.  Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly into outer space - and this happened on 12 April 1961.  Our party started with a welcome address and a short history delivered by Jess Gleeson (Herschel) and Tim (Grove) outlining some Herschel and Grove links with the astronomer Sir John Herschel.  Then we watched 2 short You Tube clips about Yuri's Night around the world and Yuri Gagarin himself.  A third clip brought to us special Yuri's Night greetings from the 6 astronauts currently on the International Space Station (filmed on that day, the 12^th).  Everyone had great fun constructing their own telescopes from kits supplied by the S.A. Astronomical Observatory before tucking into a magnificent Bring and Share supper.  Sadly the sky was overcast and we were unable to go outside to look at stars through our own telescopes or the much fancier (and bigger) ones which three members of the Southern African Astronomical Society had brought along.  But Kechil Kirkham (chairperson of the ASSA) and her team described to us how their telescopes worked which was fascinating and then they presented to the school our very own Galileo telescope!  The evening finished with an absolutely mind-boggling talk by Dr Jasper Horrell on the enormity of the universe and a little about the MEERKAT Project on which he works.

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