Cloudy skies and misty weather greeted 10 visitors (including 5 Grade 7-8 students and 5 adults) from Wilfrid Jury Public School for Exploring the Stars at Western University’s Cronyn Observatory, Thursday, April 9, 2015, 6:00 p.m. Graduate student Parshati Patel made the digital slide presentation “Life in the Universe” and fielded questions. Parshati followed this with the activity “Kitchen Comet”, making a comet from dry ice and other materials on a table set up at the front of the lecture room.
RASC London Centre was represented by Tricia Colvin and Mark Tovey. Damp misty weather ruled out opening the dome. The London Centre’s 25.4cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece), was set up inside the dome so as to view out the door to show visitors the wind turbine on the Engineering building. However, the 25.4cm Dobsonian was completely fogged up due to the humidity so that nothing could be seen. Parshati brought out the telescope kits used in the activity “Telescope Kits” so that the visitors could view terrestrial objects through small telescopes from the roof patio and did not have to go home without looking through a telescope. The visitors were gone by 7:45 p.m. after an enjoyable evening learning about astronomy, despite the cloudy, misty weather.