Graduate student Shannon Hicks made the digital slide presentation “The Life and Times of Stars” before 34 visitors, including 20 children and 14 adults, from Jeanne Sauvé French Immersion Public School Grade-6 class for Exploring the Stars at the Cronyn Observatory, Tuesday, February 11th, 2014, 7:00 p.m. Shannon immediately followed this with the activity “Kitchen Comet” making a comet from dry ice and other ingredients on a table at the front of the lecture room.
Shannon then brought everybody upstairs into the dome. RASC London Centre was represented by Everett Clark and Bob Duff. Relatively clear skies gave way to increasing clouds, followed by some clearing later in the evening. Everett showed the visitors the 5-day-past-first-quarter gibbous Moon and the double star Castor in the big 25.4cm refractor (52mm Erfle eyepiece, 84X). Bob showed them Jupiter, the Moon and the Orion Nebula (M42) in the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X) set up on the roof patio outside the dome.
The visitors were gone after expressing their appreciation for a very enjoyable evening of astronomy and everything was put away and the dome closed by around 9:00 p.m.