Cloudy skies and rain greeted 14 visitors to Western University’s Cronyn Observatory Public Night, Saturday, June 27th, 2015, 8:30 p.m. Professor Margaret Campbell-Brown made her digital slide presentation “When World’s Collide: Comets, Asteroids and the Earth”.
Graduate student Laura Lenkic was telescope operator for the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome and astronomy undergraduate student Nathalie Thibert was crowd manager. RASC London Centre was represented Bob Duff, Tricia Colvin, Mark Tovey, Paul Kerans, Charlene Kerans, graduate student and London Centre member Emily McCullough and new London Centre member Scott Vodon.
Since it was raining Emily and Bob set up the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X) inside the dome and briefly viewed the communications tower in south London through the door to the roof patio, although no visitors looked through this telescope. When everybody arrived upstairs in the dome Emily gave a telescope talk and demonstration of the big 25.4cm refractor. She showed them the 17mm Nagler eyepiece and explained the 25.4cm Dobsonian as a reflector telescope. Emily then invited a young lady visitor who had set up her Go-To Celestron 90mm Maksutov telescope to demonstrate and explain about her telescope. Bob explained how a Maksutov telescope worked and the difference between a Maksutov-Cassegrain and Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope by accessing the Internet on the dome computer. Everybody was gone and the Observatory closed down by around 11:00 p.m. after an interesting astronomy slide presentation and discussion of telescopes.