Hazy clouds greeted 25 visitors (14 children and 11 adults) from the Our Lady of Lourdes School (Delaware) Grade-6 class, to the Cronyn Observatory for Exploring the Stars on Tuesday, April 24th, 7:00 p.m. Graduate student Tyler Desjardins made the digital slide presentation, The Lives of Galaxies, and this was followed by questions. Tyler then made a special demonstration, setting up helium, mercury and neon lamps and distributing prism (grating) glasses to everybody in the lecture room. The visitors viewed the colour spectra of the glowing gas in the lamps and Tyler explained how astronomers identified the chemical elements in stars using spectroscopes.
Tyler showed the visitors the crescent Venus through hazy clouds in the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome, using the 28mm Meade Super Wide Angle Eyepiece (157X). RASC London Centre member Bob Duff showed them the crescent Moon in the 25.4cm Dobsonian, using the 17mm Nagler eyepiece (67X) and 6mm Orthoscopic eyepiece (190.5X), and Venus (190.5X). Everybody was gone by 8:40 p.m. after an interesting and enjoyable evening of astronomy.