Cloudy, later partly clearing skies greeted 30 visitors (19 children and 11 adults) from the Canadian Association for Girls in Science, Matthews Hall School, for Exploring the Stars at the Cronyn Observatory, Thursday, October 16th, 2014, 7:00 p.m. Graduate student Tony Martinez made the digital slide presentation "Extra Solar Planets" and used the "Transit Demonstration" model—a kind of extra-solar planet orrery—to show how a planetary transit in front of another star could be observed.
RASC London Centre was represented by Everett Clark, Tricia Colvin and Bob Duff, with Mark Tovey arriving at the end of the evening to help put everything away. Bob gave a talk about the history and technical aspects of the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome and explained the Standard and Sidereal Time clocks on the east wall. Everett showed the visitors Vega in the big 25.4cm refractor (18mm Radian eyepiece, 244X).
The Observatory’s 8-inch (20.3cm) Meade 2080/LX3 Schmidt-Cassegrain (12.5mm Ortho eyepiece, 160X) was set up inside the dome to view out the door towards the TV screen visible in the Western Student Recreation Centre windows but was not used. Tricia showed them the wind turbine through the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X) set up on the roof patio outside the dome. The visitors were gone by around 8:45 p.m. after a very enjoyable and informative evening of astronomy.