Cloudy skies greeted 24 visitors from the 2nd Lambeth Sparks, including 13 children and 11 adults, for Exploring the Stars at the Cronyn Observatory, Wednesday, February 29th, 6:00 p.m. Graduate student Robin Wing made the digital slide presentation Exploring the Universe with Telescopes and this was followed by the activity Telescope Kits in which the children assembled their own telescopes from kits.
Damp weather kept the Observatory dome closed and Robin invited everybody outside on the roof patio where the children viewed distant objects with the small telescopes they had assembled. He also explained how the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome worked. On the roof patio RASC London Centre member Bob Duff explained how a reflector telescope worked and invited the visitors to view the weathervane on the Engineering building through the London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian, using the 17mm Nagler eyepiece (67X).
The event was over by 7:00 p.m. and the last members of the group left around 7:30 p.m. The telescopes remained behind to be disassembled and used again. It was a very enjoyable evening of assembling and using telescopes.