Clear skies greeted visitors to the Cronyn Observatory for International Observe the Moon Night, Saturday, September 6th, 2014, 4:00—10:00 p.m. Scheduled events included a Rover Exhibit (4:00—6:15 p.m.) Kids Activities (5:30 p.m.—), Public Talk, Panel Discussion, Raffle Draw & Art Contest Prizes and Telescope Viewing (5:00—10:00 p.m.). There were estimated to be more than 100 visitors for the evening.
Graduate students Emily McCullough and Parshati Patel operated the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome showing visitors the 2-day-prior-to-full Moon using the 32mm Erfle (137X) and 18mm Radian (244X) eyepieces. They spent some time hunting for Comet Jacques (C/2014 E2) with the big 25.4cm refractor.
RASC London Centre was represented by Dale Armstrong, Everett Clark, Bob Duff, Steve Imrie, Peter Jedicke, Mike Roffey, Mark Tovey and Harold Tutt. London Centre member Richard Gibbens was also there and listened to the presentations. Harold Tutt set up his 80mm Stellarvue Nighthawk refractor on the grassy lawn behind Alumni Hall facing south and showed some 30 people the Moon, Saturn and Mars. Mike Roffey set up his 15cm Celestron NexStar 6SE Schmidt-Cassegrain beside Harold’s telescope and showed people the Moon. Mark Tovey set up a 20.3cm Celestron CPC 800 GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain on the sidewalk behind the Cronyn Observatory and used a 40mm Omni Plossl eyepiece (51X) to show people the crater Tycho on the Moon and the double star Albireo.
On the Cronyn Observatory’s roof patio Dale Armstrong set up the Cronyn Observatory’s 8-inch (20.3cm) Meade 2080/LX3 Schmidt-Cassegrain showing people the Moon (26mm Plossl eyepiece, 77X), Saturn and Mars (12.5mm Ortho eyepiece, 160X), Albireo (15mm eyepiece, 133X), and the Moon again (12.5mm Ortho eyepiece with 2X Barlow lens, 160X). Bob supervised observing through the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X) and tried using the 2-inch Baader Neutral Density filter to reduce the Moon’s brightness.
Posters of the Moon were distributed to visitors during the course of the evening to help them identify features through the telescopes. Other representatives from Western University’s Physics and Astronomy Department included computer resources person Henry Leparskas and graduate students Dilini Subasinghe and Shannon Hicks and others. The Cronyn Observatory was closed down around 12 midnight after a very successful evening observing and learning about the Moon.