Partly cloudy, later clearing skies greeted 37 visitors (21 children and 16 adults) from the Jean Vanier Catholic School Grade-6 class for Exploring the Stars at Western University’s Cronyn Observatory, Monday, October 19th, 2015, 7:00 p.m. Graduate student Dilini Subasinghe made 2 digital slide presentations, which included “Our Solar System” followed by a shorter version of “Galaxies”, and fielded questions.
RASC London Centre was represented by Paul Kerans and Bob Duff. When everybody arrived upstairs in the dome, Bob gave a talk about the history of the Cronyn Observatory and technical aspects of the big 25.4cm refractor. Bob also explained the Standard and Sidereal Time clocks on the east wall. Dilini showed the visitors the one-day-prior-to-first quarter Moon in the big 25.4cm refractor (52mm Erfle eyepiece, 84X). On the roof patio outside the dome Paul operated the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X), showing visitors the Moon, M31 and the Owl Cluster (NGC457). Paul also showed them an iron meteorite he had brought. The adults took 6 “Getting Started in Astronomy” (RASC, SkyNews [2015]) pamphlets that Bob introduced to them. The visitors were gone by 8:30 p.m. after an enjoyable evening of astronomy.