Cloudy skies with some light rain greeted 25 visitors (16 children and 9 adults) from the 68th B London Beaver Colony for Exploring the Stars at the Cronyn Observatory, Wednesday, March 19th, 2014, 6:30 p.m. Graduate student Shannon Hicks made the digital slide presentation “The Cub Scout Astronomy Badge” and answered questions.
RASC London Centre was represented by Everett Clark and Bob Duff. Since rain ruled out opening the dome, Everett set up the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian telescope just inside the door leading to the roof patio and directed it towards the weathervane on the Engineering building. Bob gave a brief talk about the history and technical aspects of the big 25.4cm refractor and explained the 25.4cm Dobsonian reflector. Bob then showed the visitors the weathervane on the Engineering building through the 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X). Everett explained the 2 telescopes (Schmidt camera and Cassegrain reflector) piggybacked on the big 25.4cm refractor and demonstrated how the whole telescope array could be moved around using the ropes attached to the ends of the big refractor and counterweights.
Towards the end of the evening Shannon distributed 16 “Star Finder” planispheres and Bob showed one Beaver leader how to assemble and use them. The visitors were gone by 7:45 p.m. after an enjoyable evening learning about astronomy.