Mostly cloudy skies greeted 17 visitors (13 children and 4 adults) from the Masonville 77th Cub Scouts at the Cronyn Observatory for Exploring the Stars, Thursday, February 6th, 2014, 7:00 p.m. Graduate student Shannon Hicks made the digital slide presentation “Constellations” and around 7:25 p.m. brought everybody upstairs into the dome.
Everett Clark and Bob Duff represented the RASC London Centre. Everett showed the visitors the first quarter Moon, glimpsed through clouds, in the 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X) on the roof patio. He was soon joined by Bob who continued showing them the Moon until it was completely clouded out. Snow ruled out opening the dome.
Bringing everybody back downstairs, Shannon continued with the “Constellations” presentation and distributed 18 “Star Finder” planispheres, including 16 to the visitors and 2 to Everett and Bob, to assist with demonstration (at this and future events). Shannon showed pdf files from Starry Night PRO in PowerPoint slides and the Cubs identified constellations and stars using their “Star Finder” planispheres. The visitors were gone by 9:06 p.m. after an enjoyable evening viewing the Moon through a telescope and learning how to use a planisphere to locate the constellations.