Cloudy skies greeted 25 visitors (including 17 children and 8 adults) from the homeschoolers group Kids Learning Connections to the Cronyn Observatory for Exploring the Stars, Wednesday, November 12th, 2014, 6:00 p.m. Graduate student Shannon Hicks made the digital slide presentation "Extra Solar Planets" and used the "Transit Demo" 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, Mark Tovey, Bob Duff and Tricia Colvin, who arrived later around 7:06 p.m. Since the group had previously visited the Cronyn for Exploring the Stars on November 4th, there was no need to give a talk about the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome or the 2 clocks on the east wall showing Standard and Sidereal Time.
Shannon showed the visitors the white light and flashing red light on the communications tower in south London through the big 25.4cm refractor (32mm Erfle eyepiece, 137X). Mark and Everett carried the Observatory's 8-inch (20.3cm) Meade 2080/LX3 Schmidt-Cassegrain (20mm Plossl eyepiece, 100X) outside on the roof patio and showed people the TV screen visible in the Western Student Recreation Centre windows. Tricia showed people the compressed gas canister visible in an Engineering building window through the 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X), which was also set up on the roof patio. The event wrapped up around 8:00 p.m. after an enjoyable and interesting evening of astronomy despite the cloudy damp weather.