My course on astronomy 2024

Like Methodism, I am committed to lifelong learning and enjoy exploring areas of knowledge, historical biography, and so on. Much of my research has gone into papers on the Methodist Heritage website (https://www.methodistheritage.org.uk/methodist-history/methodist-missionary-history-project/ ) or talks to local history societies. Astronomy has fascinated me for decades from primary school days when the Children’s Newspaper had a regular feature on the night sky and Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future appeared in the Eagle comic. I made a little telescope and was transfixed by my first view of the moon at 30x magnification. Since then, in a very amateur way, I have watched the skies on and off for about 70 years. My star atlas came with us to Africa where I organised a school astronomy club. Around 2014 I came across distance learning courses with the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and signed up for Introduction to Astronomy, set at Level 4 (first year university). It gave a good overview of the subject; the sun, planets, stars, constellations, galaxies, gravity, relativity… That whetted my appetite and over the years I took a few more modules. They need about 8-9 hours study a week with course notes, assignments, and online tutorials. Those modules took me through the Sun, Earth, and Climate (relevant), History of Great Astronomers (loved it!), Cosmology (mind bending), Astrobiology (fascinating) and Physics and Maths (hard work and useful) to complete a Certificate in Higher Education with distinction this year. Level 5 and 6 could follow but I plead age and am stopping at this point.

These courses have expanded my view of the material creation and I have preached a sermon in a few of our churches on science, God, and the wonder of creation. It is a beautiful creation with order and variety to be treated with respect and with hidden wonders that often turn out to be useful.

In one of his long poems TS Eliot said, ‘old men ought to be explorers’. Astronomy has taught me a lot but there are other things to explore.