Monday 16th January was our second session in conjunction with the BBC2 event. Another perfectly clear night attracted around 100 visitors on this occasion. Our experience of the first session the previous Saturday showed that a change of presentation would be beneficial. The majority of the visitors seemed to arrive at a similar time so this time they were directed first of all to the main observatory where I was waiting to “meet & greet”. The 16″SCT was dedicated to looking at Jupiter as the large dome, although motorised, is too slow to cover the many widespread objects in the sky. As each visitor came to the eyepiece I advised them how to focus the telescope and explained to them what they were seeing. They were amazed how the bright “star” that they could see through the dome opening, was transformed into a planet with surface detail and surrounded by four moons. It was good to see how many mums came along bringing their children, many of whom had to be virtually dragged away from the eyepiece. For some reason, still not investigated, the tracking on the telescope failed, this meant that the instrument had to frequently be adjusted with the handset. Fortunately, this turned out to be a bonus as most of the viewers, particularly the children were able to have a go at driving it themselves.
After the Jupiter viewing the visitors dispersed outside where Dave was giving a guided tour of the most popular astronomical objects using a laser pen to point out their positions and then show them telescopically with a 6″ and 8″ Dobsonian.
In the meantime, Andy was manning the other 16″ SCT in conjunction with a laptop to locate other objects in the sky and even display some of them on a monitor by way of a high sesitivity video camera.
Ultimately, a good proportion of the visitors congregated in the middle floor of the main observatory to warm up and enjoy the hot drinks and nibbles that had been provided.
Tuesday 17th January was our third Stargazing Live event. The weather forecast had not been particularly favourable and by 18.00 the sky was clouding over and the wind was picking up. It looked as though we were going to have to fall back on our contingency plan of powerpoint presentation and videos of astronomical observations recorded at the Astronomy Centre. However, by some miracle, just as the first visitors arrived, the sky cleared and became probably the best so far. Around 75 visitors were treated to the same format that was so successful the previous night. Judging by the happy faces and the complimentary comments entered into the visitors book, it seems that our efforts had been well appreciated.
Andy, Keith and myself went up to the observatory again on the Wednesday just in case anyone else might have expected us still to be open. We had no takers so we just relaxed, sat back and watched Stargazing Live on a laptop!
We are offering the same event on Saturday January 21st, weather permitting.
Peter.
Unfortunately this isn’t the first time this has happened although much more was taken this time and has knocked Peter over as most if not all of the items taken were expensive and unique and virtually impossible to replace with the Astronomy Centre’s low turnover.
