Partly cloudy skies greeted 18 visitors (12 children and 6 adults) from the 66th London Brownies for Exploring the Stars at the Cronyn Observatory, Tuesday, April 30th, 2013, 6:30 p.m. Graduate student Emily McCullough made her digital slide presentation “Brownies Exploring Space.” Emily distributed 12 “Star Finder” planispheres and 12 “Moon Gazers’ Guide” cards and showed them how to use them.
Everett Clark, Rob McNeil, Dave McCarter and Bob Duff represented the RASC London Centre. Bob arrived early and set up the University’s 90mm Coronado H-Alpha Solar Telescope and
SkyWatcher EQ5 Equatorial mount on the walkway in front of the Cronyn Observatory. He was soon joined by Rob and Everett. Dave McCarter arrived and gave Emily a package of 100 “Star Finder” planispheres.
Clouds partially obscured the Sun and the image could not be resolved clearly in the 90mm Coronado solar telescope. Emily, therefore, took the group upstairs and showed them the communications tower in south London through the 25.4cm refractor in the dome (32mm Erfle eyepiece, 137X). Everett showed them the weathervane on the Engineering building through the 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X).
The Brownies and their leaders left around 8:30 p.m. while it was still too bright to even see Jupiter in the western sky. They had an enjoyable time even though it did not get dark enough to view any sky objects through the telescopes.
Bob Duff
Higher Education Liaison
RASC London Centre