Cloudy skies greeted 39 visitors (25 children, including several of high school age or young adults, as well as 14 adults) from the Springfield Public School Grade 5-6 Class to the Cronyn Observatory for Exploring the Stars, Thursday, March 7th, 2013, 7:00 p.m. Graduate student Allison Hill made the slide presentation, “Mars,” and included a short video of the JPL Curiosity Rover landing on Mars, August 6th, 2012. She followed this with the “Telescope Kits” activity in which the Grade 5-6 assembled telescopes and viewed an image of the full Moon, followed by a Hubble deep-field image of galaxies.
Everett Clark and Bob Duff represented RASC London Centre. Everett arrived early, making ready the 25.4cm refractor in the dome and also setting up the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian on the roof patio. Everett installed the 8X50mm right-angle finderscope on the Dobsonian and Bob directed it towards the weathervane on the Engineering building, which made a fine sight in the 17mm Nagler eyepiece (66X).
Bringing the group upstairs into the dome Allison directed the 25.4cm refractor towards the communications tower in south London, and showed everybody views of the tower through the telescope, using the 32mm Erfle eyepiece (137X). Bob showed the visitors the weathervane on the Engineering building through the 25.4cm Dobsonian, through both the 17mm Nagler eyepiece (66X) and the 8X50 mm finderscope. They also viewed the red bulls-eye projected on the Telrad finder. The visitors were gone by around 8:35 p.m., after a very enjoyable evening of astronomy, despite the clouds.
Bob Duff
Higher Education Liaison
RASC London Centre