Mostly cloudy skies greeted 21 visitors (14 children and 7 adults / leaders) from the 1st Lambeth Brownies for Exploring the Stars at Western University’s Cronyn Observatory, Thursday, January 26th, 2017, 6:30 p.m. Graduate student Kendra Kellogg presented the digital slide presentation “Constellations” and fielded questions. Kendra followed this with the “Constellation” activity, distributing 21 “Star Finder” planispheres and helping the Brownies assemble them with adhesive tape. She then showed them how to use the planispheres.
RASC London Centre was represented by Everett Clark, Paul Kerans and Bob Duff. When everybody arrived upstairs in the dome, Kendra gave them a brief tour of the big 25.4 cm refractor in the dome. Since clouds obscured Venus, Everett directed the 25.4cm refractor (28mm Meade Super Wide Angle eyepiece, 157X) so as to show the visitors the red lights on the communications tower in south London. Everett had set up the observatory’s 8-inch (20.3cm) Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain (26mm Plossl eyepiece, 77X) inside the dome door to the roof patio so as to view the TV screen visible in the windows of the Western Sports & Recreation Center. Paul set up the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X) on the roof patio outside the dome so as to view the wind turbine on the Engineering building. Bob supervised as the Brownies viewed through both these amateur telescopes.
Paul showed the visitors his chondrite (stony) and iron meteorites as well as his Moon and Mars meteorite samples in small plastic display cases. Paul had placed his lunar meteorite sample display case in a wooden block with a transparent Lexan polycarbonate sheet cover so he could invite visitors to “walk on the Moon.” Paul also brought his Meteorite and Impactite collection is a small black case. The visitors were gone by around 7:50 p.m. after and enjoyable evening learning about the constellations, examining meteorites and looking through the telescope.