Clear, slightly hazy skies greeted the Space Society of London (SSoL) to the Cronyn Observatory for an evening of Exploring the Stars, Wednesday, October 30th, 2013, 7:00 p.m. Graduate student Tony Martinez made the digital slide presentation “Life in the Universe” and fielded thoughtful questions from the visitors during and after his slide talk.
RASC London Centre was represented by Everett Clark, later joined by Bob Duff. Everett reported 23 visitors including 17 members of the SSoL plus 6 guests. Bob counted 24 visitors when he arrived around 7:40 p.m., including one person reported to have stepped outside. The number of visitors appears to have been 23–24.
Upstairs in the dome, Bob gave a talk about the history of the Observatory and technical aspects of the telescope. He also explained the 2 clocks on the east wall of the dome and the difference between standard and sidereal time. Everett showed the visitors the star Vega the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome, using the 12.5mm Ortho eyepiece (351X). Everett and Bob then located the Double-Double star system Epsilon Lyrae in the big 25.4cm refractor, which was nicely resolved in the 18mm Radian eyepiece (244X). Finally, they showed visitors the Ring Nebula (M57) in the 25.4cm refractor using the 32mm Erfle (137X) and 28mm Meade Super Wide Angle (157X) eyepieces. The Orion Nebula Filter was tried to enhance the view.
Everett also set up the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian on the Observatory’s roof patio and Bob showed the visitors Vega (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X), Epsilon Lyrae (6mm Ortho eyepiece, 186X) and the yellow and blue double star Albireo (66X).
The visitors were gone by 9:15 pm. after a very enjoyable and informative evening of astronomy.