My son Adam Parker recently graduated with a degree in Journalism and has been writing articles for local newspaper, the Lyminton Times.  In today’s edition there is an example of his work where he describes our recent visit to Sir Patrick at his Selsey home.  Picture courtesy Adam Parker.

On 10th February 2009 Greg Parker, Adam Parker & Noel Carboni visited Sir Patrick at Farthings to present him with a joint-author signed copy of Star Vistas.  Sir Patrick was in fine form and gave us the keys to his observatories to have a look around.  The big Newtonian reflector through which he did much of his lunar work is in great condition in the “big green” observatory, and the refurbished refractor in the roll-off shed looks superb too.  Sir Patrick wrote one of the Forewords to Star Vistas along with his life-long friend Sir Arthur C Clarke, and “Bang!” book co-author Dr. Brian May.  Thank you Sir Patrick for a lovely lunch and so much of your valuable time – we really appreciate it

Noel Carboni flew in from Florida on February 6th to attend the Springer book-signing session on the 7th.  All went well even though the Circle line wasn’t running that day as a last desperate act of sabotage.  Plenty of UKAI forum members showed up – thanks guys!

I then took Noel down to see Sir Patrick Moore yesterday (10th February) and he signed a couple of copies of Star Vistas for us (Sir Patrick is one of the Foreword authors).

After a lightning-quick visit Noel started his return journey to Florida this morning.  I think it was a bit of a shock to Noel having to suffer sub-zero temperatures, flood and heavy snow for the short duration of his visit

Well – Noel & I eventually made it to AstroFest even though London Transport did its level best to halt our progress by closing down the Circle line today – THANK YOU VERY MUCH for nothing!  Anyway, great to see you all there today, plenty of action and plenty of people despite the recent poor weather (apparently the bad weather made yesterday a bit of a quiet day).

A special big thank you goes out to Springer who have produced a really great publication with Star Vistas, the colour reproduction and the quality are truly excellent!!

Just heard from Springer that the consignment of Star Vistas books has arrived safely in the U.K.  So it’s all systems go for this coming Saturday.  As I write this Noel is in the air with an ETA of 11:00 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Noel will arrive in the U.K. this Friday 6th February and we’ll both be up at AstroFest on the Saturday to sign copies of Star Vistas.  Remember this is a unique opportunity to obtain your First Edition copy of Star Vistas signed by both authors as we have no plans to get together in the future for another book signing.  See you in South Kensington this coming weekend

Noel Carboni has applied for a passport renewal, meaning that it looks like he’ll be attending the Star Vistas book signing at AstroFest 2009 on Saturday February 7th.  This is quite likely the only time in the near future that we will get together to sign Star Vistas, so if you would like a rather unique copy of Star Vistas, signed by BOTH authors, get along to this event

Our Dark Skies (ODS) is the forum where I first met up with Noel Carboni.  You can pre-order your copy of Star Vistas through the ODS site here.