The sky was cloudy when graduate students Allison Hill and Parshati Patel greeted 13 visitors from Best Buddies to the Cronyn Observatory for Exploring the Stars, Wednesday, January 16th, 2013, 6:30 p.m. Since the bulb in the projector appeared to be burned-out, Allison made her digital slide presentation, “Constellations and the Solar System,” on the laptop computer set up on the projection cart.
Allison and Parshati then presented the activity “Crater Experiment” in which flour and cocoa was poured into an aluminum tray and objects were dropped or thrown into it to demonstrate how craters are formed on the Moon and planets.
RASC London Centre members Everett Clark and Bob Duff assisted with the telescopes. Since 2 of the visitors used walkers and had difficulty with the stairs, Bob set up the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X) on the walkway in front of the Cronyn Observatory and directed it towards a red light on a campus building to the north. However, the visitors with walkers were helped upstairs into dome. Some of the visitors climbed the observing ladder and viewed the communications tower in south London through the big 25.4cm refractor (32mm Erfle eyepiece, 137X) in the dome. The visitors with walkers had another look through the 2.4cm Dobsonian, which Bob set up on the roof and directed towards the large weathervane on the roof of the Engineering Building. The visitors left around 7:50 p.m. after a very enjoyable evening of astronomy.
Bob Duff
Higher Education Liaison
RASC London Centre