Trying to do astronomy from a moving ship and does the shipboard physics colloquia actually exist?

Greetings from Palmia Observatory (offsite at the island of Cyprus)

Well its been a busy week, what with trying to find our way around the cruise ship "Viking Sea", but we are getting used to it.  We also tried viewing the stars from the top deck and found that even though the skies are dark, the cruise ship itself is surrounded by lights.  There are lights illuminating the water and wake and even though it is
quite sunny during the daytime, the nightime is quite cloudy.  Just take a look at what the typical forecase we saw on scope nights identified for us.  Anyway we were able to see a lot of stars and I could even make out Orion.

Scope Nights app often predicted cloudy night time observing.  (At least the app worked overseas)

I've been able to find a few spare hours to tackle some of the physics textbooks that were packed up for the trip. Once a physicist wannabe, always a physicist wannabe, I guess!  We also had the good luck to bump into several retired college proffesors, one of which was a retired zoology professor, Dr. Jack, and the other, lucky for me was a retired physics professor, Dr. Paul.  Ok, ok, so Dr. Paul was a condensed matter guy, it was still nice to meet him and everyone else.  Thank you and nice to meet everyone, Jack (and Nancy) and Paul!

I even claimed to have found a physics colloquium onboard where I could think about star patterns and ponder the mysteries of the universe.  However, Resident Astronomer Peggy was quick to find out the truth.  See below!

Resident Astronomer Peggy discovers where Resident Astronomer George claimed to go for an astronomy colloquium.  Hey, combining the star charts and martinis ought to be covered under the colloquia title, shouldn't it?

Until next time,

Resident Astronomer George

If you are interested in things astronomical or in astrophysics and cosmology

Check out this blog at www.palmiaobservatory.com