Hazy skies greeted 127 visitors to Western University’s Cronyn Observatory Summer Public Night, Saturday, August 18th, 2018, 8:30 p.m. Graduate student Viraja Khatu made 2 presentations of her digital slide presentation “Chaotic Creatures in the Universe: Supermassive Black Holes in Action!” and fielded questions. RASC London Centre members Lynn Jones was “crowd manager,” and counted 127 visitors for the evening, and Henry Leparskas did the “Transit Demonstration” and the “Spectroscopy Demonstration,” downstairs in the “Black Room, “and showed visitors the historic “Period Rooms.”
RASC London Centre members Henry Leparskas, Heather MacIsaac, Bob Duff, Lynn Jones and Frank Sowa were there early in the evening and were later joined by Everett Clark and Mark Tovey. Graduate student Hadi Papei was telescope operator in the dome and showed visitors the first quarter Moon through the big 25.4cm refractor, using the 52mm Erfle eyepiece (84X) and later the Meade 28mm Super Wide Angle eyepiece (157X). On the observation deck, Bob showed visitors the Moon through the London Centre’s home-built 30.5cm Dobsonian (18mm Radian eyepiece, 83X). Heather showed visitors the Moon though her Celestron NexStar 90SLT 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain (22mm Vixen Lanthanum LVW eyepiece, 57X). Frank Sowa set up his Celestron NexStar 6SE 15cm Schmidt-Cassegrain and showed visitors the Moon and Saturn, using his 17mm Hyperion Modular eyepiece (88X), and Mars, with his 8mm Orion Stratus Wide-Field eyepiece (187.5X), and Mars again with the 17mm Hyperion eyepiece (88X). The sky was so hazy that to the unaided eye only the Moon was visible. Nevertheless, Frank located Saturn and Mars with his computerized Celestron NexStar 6SE telescope.
Downstairs in the “Black Room” Henry Leparskas did the the “Transit Demonstration,” with the “Transit Demo” model, showing how the transit detection method worked for finding extra-solar planets, and the “Spectroscopy Demonstration,” with the visitors putting on diffraction grating glasses to view the spectra of 4 gas discharge lamps, including hydrogen, helium, neon and mercury. Henry also showed visitors the “1940s Period Room,” a recreation of Dr. H. R. Kingston’s 1940 office, with his brass refractor and the Sotellunium—a mechanical eclipse demonstration model built by W. G. Colgrove—on display; and the “1967 Period Room,” recreating the early control room of the Elginfield Observatory to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation—Canada 150. The “W. G. Colgrove Workshop Period Room” was also open for visitors’ inspection. The 3 “Period Rooms” were designed by RASC London Centre member Mark Tovey.
The visitors were gone by around 11:00 p.m. and the observatory was closed around 11:30 p.m., but not before Viraja, Hadi and the RASC London Centre members had viewed Mars through the 25.4cm refractor, using Heather’s 13mm Vixen Lanthanum LVW eyepiece (337X).