Clear skies greeted 21 children and 15 adults (including 2 leaders) for a total of 36 visitors from the 67th London Sparks for Exploring the Stars at Western University’s Cronyn Observatory, Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015, 6:30 p.m. Graduate student Kendra Kellogg was going to present the slide presentation “Constellations” but the program would not load. Since the slide presentation would not load Kendra simply did the activity with the planispheres, distributing 26 “Star Finder” planispheres.
They went upstairs into the dome and RASC London Centre member Paul Kerans gave a talk on the big 25.4cm refractor and explained the difference between a reflector and refractor telescope. They viewed the star Vega with the 25.4cm refractor (28mm Meade Super Wide Angle eyepiece, 157X) and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) in the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X). Paul distributed 11 “Getting Started in Astronomy” (RASC, SkyNews [2015]) pamphlet to interested adults. There were many great questions asked by the children as well as the adults. This was a very enjoyable evening of astronomy, ending at 7:30 p.m.