Public Observing at CCAS

The Cape Cod Astronomy Society holds weekly summer star parties during the summer. (Check their web site for details, but alas, they are done for 2008.) I've managed to miss all of them so far this summer so I was quite pleased to find myself able to attend tonight's.

Unlike the public observing from the New Hampshire Astronomy Society, it seems that CCAS members rarely bring their scopes. This isn't to say that either club is right or wrong. With the big dome and the big scope available for the public, CCAS chooses to use the exceptional facilities. NHAS tends to have mobile star parties, so of course they need to bring out the 'scopes!

But, nothing was stopping me from bringing mine and I just love showing the skies to people. So I packed up the Burgess 1278 and drove off to Dennis Yarmouth High School.

Of course the Clear Sky clock showed a gorgeous forecast and as soon as it got towards dusk, the clouds came, along with the great sunsets. Yes, this is an actual photo from that night.

But the dome was open and I sat down with Mike and Peter and listened as they planned out the night's objects for the guests. Now that is impressive! I went and set up the Burgess and the skies got worse and worse.

Fortunately, holes appeared and we were able to show Jupiter a lot. That was about all we could show at first. Bands were quite visible and everyone was extremely impressed with the Burgess, which really pleased me especially considering that I forgot to bring the Baader Semi-APO filter!

I was especially honored to have Werner Schmidt himself both look my my telescope and be impressed by it. I'll remember that for a long time.

After almost everyone left we pointed the 16" at M13 again just for me, that was very nice. (It was featured all night long for the guests.) And then we tried for Neptune and Uranus. I never did see Neptune but the others were able to discern that it wasn't stellar as you turned it in and out of focus.

We tried the same in Burgess. Uranus was lovely, quite a distinct disk. Same thing as before for Neptune however, others could see it non-stellar but I couldn't.

Next time for sure!

Astronomy 101

Last week or so I gave a talk to a standing room only house, 46 people, at the Truro Library on Astronomy. The title of the talk was called "Astronomy 101: What I Can See in the Sky Tonight."

I talked about the Milky Way, Constellations, Moon, Jupiter the Perseids and Light Pollution. I tried to give some detail but not too much, didn't want to overwhelm anyone, nor bore anyone. The crowed listen attentively, asking questions both during the talk and after the talk.

Afterwards, I set up the Burgess 5" refractor for a look at the Moon and Jupiter. Clouds were very much threatening but they stayed clear and all who wanted to were able to see both them. I had a little patter going on, talking about the terminator on the moon and central peaks, and then talking about the moons of Jupiter and the cloud bands.

I'd really like to thank both Dave Martin who had been the scheduled speaker and Sharon Sullivan of the library for making it all happen.

Come See the Moon!

"Come see the Moon!"

Ok, I really didn't say that. I'm not sure why, that's what one is supposed to say, right? Last Saturday night I set up my 5" refractor, a Burgess 1278, on MacMillan Wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts to do some sidewalk astronomy. I was still setting up when I had my first pair of "customers."

I had originally put the Garret Optical 30mm Wide Angle eyepice in, but I when I saw how some folks had problems getting the sweet spot, I pulled it and used a Celestron 30mm Plossl. Both eyepieces were in a 2x Barlow. This yields 67x with a FOV of about 0.8 degrees. 67x is great because you can see much of the moon yet still make out craters and ever see the central peak in some of them.

You could see the entire waxing gibbous moon plus some to spare. This was good because I set up right at dusk and Polaris was no where to be seen. I had a pretty good guess at North (from looking at the high tide seaweed mark in Google Maps!). The ASGT does not track well at all if your north is off but it turns out I was good enough. I only had to hit the Down button bout every 15 minutes.

But enough of the tech stuff, what about the people? I met Russian, French and German tourist. Couples, singles. Families. The usual response was "Wow" accompanied with a big smile.

Some people were initially distrustful, but when I assured them that it was completely free they came over and put their eye to the eyepiece.

And of course, some were not interested at all.

I should two bicycle police officers who loved it. Later on I showed 2 other officers with a car, whose observations were cut short by a nearby drug transaction!

Many people couldn't believe that I was doing this for free. Some wanted to tip me. I, of course, refused. I told them to donate to a school but that seems lame, I need a better line to handle those situations. I kept telling the story of John Dobson over and over again, talking of his commitment to sidewalk astronomy.

I was setup for about 2 1/2 hours, thin clouds came and put a haze on the moon but nobody really minded. Late in the evening I tried showing Jupiter but the high winds really made it pretty wobbly.

I'll certainly be back to do this again and I encourage all of you to bring your telescopes to the street and share the sky.

Oh, and what did I say instead of "Come see the moon?" My line was "Would you like to see the moon?" I'm not sure why I changed it, I just did.