Partly cloudy later clearing skies greeted 38 visitors, including 30 youth and 8 counsellors from the Indigenous Services Mini-University Camp at Western University to the Cronyn Observatory, Tuesday, July 15th, 2014: 9:00 p.m. Graduate student Tony Martinez began with a short digital slide presentation "Introduction to Cronyn Observatory" followed by his digital slide presentation "Solar and Stellar Winds".
RASC London Centre was represented by Everett Clark and Bob Duff. Tony fielded questions following the presentations and everybody was up in the dome by 10:00 p.m. Bob gave a talk about the history and technical aspects of the big 25.4cm refractor and explained the Standard and Sidereal Time clocks on the east wall. He turned on the telescope motor drive, explaining how it tracked stars as they moved across the sky. By this time the skies were clearing and Everett rotated and opened the dome to reveal Mars and Spica in the south-western sky. As the students lined up to view through the big 25.4cm refractor, Bob set up the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian on the roof patio outside the dome. Throughout the evening Everett showed the visitors Mars and Arcturus through the big 25.4cm refractor (18mm Radian eyepiece, 244X) and Arcturus again (12.5mm Ortho eyepiece, 351X). Bob showed them Saturn and the “Double-Double” star system Epsilon Lyrae through the 25.4cm Dobsonian (6mm Ortho eyepiece, 186X).
After everybody had gone Tony and Bob viewed the Ring Nebula (M57) through the 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X). The visitors were gone by around 11:00 p.m. after a very informative and enjoyable evening of astronomy.