As Reported by Paul Kerans
Cloudy rainy skies greeted 14 visitors (10 children and 4 adults / leaders) from the 80th Westmount Cubs for Exploring the Stars at Western University’s Cronyn Observatory, Tuesday, April 4th, 2017, 6:30 p.m. Graduate student Kendra Kellogg presented the digital slide presentation “Our Solar System” and fielded questions. Kendra followed this with the activity “Telescope Kits” with the Cubs assembling and testing simple telescopes from small reusable kits.
RASC London Centre was represented by Everett Clark and Paul Kerans. Rainy weather ruled out opening the dome. When everybody arrived upstairs in the dome, Kendra gave a talk explaining some of the technical aspects of the big 25.4cm refractor, as well as the observatory’s 8-inch (20.3cm) Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain (20mm Plossl eyepiece, 100X), which Everett had set up inside the dome so that the Cubs could view the TV screen in the Western Sports & Recreation Center through the roof patio door.
Paul showed the Cubs his meteorites, including the chondrite (stony) and iron meteorites as well as the Moon and Mars meteorite samples in small plastic display cases. Paul invited them to “walk on the Moon” by stepping on his lunar meteorite sample display case placed in a wooden block with a transparent Lexan polycarbonate sheet cover. The visitors were gone by around 8:15 p.m. after an enjoyable evening learning about astronomy, telescopes and meteorites.