Mostly cloudy skies greeted 15 visitors (10 children and 5 adults / leaders) from the 1st Dutton Brownies and Guides for Exploring the Stars at Western University’s Cronyn Observatory, Thursday, January 14th, 2016, 6:00 p.m. Graduate student Laura Lenkic presented the digital slide presentation “The Girl Guide Astronomy Badge” and fielded questions. Laura followed this with the activity “Telescope Kits”, with the children assembling simple telescopes from small reusable kits.
RASC London Centre was represented by Everett Clark, Paul Kerans and Bob Duff. When everybody arrived upstairs in the dome, Bob gave a brief talk about the Cronyn Observatory’s big 25.4cm refractor. With the dome opened and the big 25.4cm refractor (32mm Erfle eyepiece, 137X) directed towards the southwest, Everett and Bob supervised as the children and adults lined up to view the 5-day-past-new crescent Moon appearing briefly through clouds in the mostly cloudy sky. On the roof patio outside the dome, Paul showed them the Moon through the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 66X). Paul also showed them Paul showed them an iron meteorite along with samples of Mars and Moon rocks in small display cases. The visitors left the dome by around 7:20 p.m. and the observatory was closed down by 7:35 p.m., after a very enjoyable evening learning about astronomy.