Cloudy skies greeted 28 visitors (13 children and 15 adults) from the 3rd St. Thomas Brownies for Exploring the Stars at Western University’s Cronyn Observatory, Tuesday, April 7th, 2015, 6:30 p.m. Graduate student Parshati Patel made the digital slide presentation“The Scout / Guide Astronomy Badge”, (designed especially for Brownies). Parshati followed this with the activity “Telescope Kits”, with the Brownies assembling small telescopes from reusable kits and viewing a slide to focus them.
Bringing the group upstairs into the dome, Parshati took the Brownies outside on the roof patio to view and focus better with the small telescopes they had assembled on terrestrial objects such as trees and buildings. Since it was cloudy, the dome was opened and closed for demonstration but the big 25.4cm refractor was not used.
RASC London Centre was represented by Tricia Colvin and Mark Tovey. Tricia set up the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece) inside the dome so as to view out the door and showed the visitors the wind turbine on the Engineering building and the lights on the communications tower in south London. Tricia and Mark gave a joint talk to them with Mark speaking on the history of the Cronyn Observatory and Tricia on the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome. Mark and Tricia put away the 25.4cm Dobsonian at the end of the evening. The visitors were gone by 8:00 p.m. after an enjoyable evening of astronomy, despite the cloudy weather.