Saturns Magic Touch

[spudicus]

Hi All,

Having a cracking night observing here in Berkshire. Spent a good couple of hours observing the Mare Crisium and the fault line below Cauchy (using the excellent book The Modern Moon, a very handy guide - recommended by AstroMan - Cheers mate)

Was really chilling out when a little face popped over the fence. My new neighbour Eddie asked if I was manning an Ack Ack Gun! I told him it was actually a 5 inch refractor telescope, and would he care to have a peek.

Well 30 minutes later having seen the Moon under high magnification, and a quick peek at Venus I asked him if he would like to see Saturn...

It never fails 8) :saturn: 8)

My 68 year old neighbour says he's off to buy some binos on Monday! And he's promised to kill every light in his house as soon as the Sun goes down. Happy days.

Anyways, I'm back off outside to make the most of the clear skies.

Later,

Spud

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

You'll probably get infested with the guy from next door and his shiny new 16" RCX that he's just ordered now that you've inspired him. What a nuisance. Sounds like you have good neighbours Spud, worth their weight in APOs.

Captain Chaos

[Kain]

Same sort of thing around here.

As we have no back garden as such, I have the scope out on the front lawn, so neighbours pass by walking dogs etc and ask what the hell is that!? When I tell them it's telescope they usually ask how the hell do you hold that up to your eye!

Then they come and have a look, firstly they try to look through the bottom end of the scope and all they see is a fan, which puzzles them them abit!.

I then show them Saturn! They were like 'No way' and I have to convince them that its not a picture glued somewhere but it's actually Saturn and the little 'dots' are its moons!

Pretty funny really, half of them don't believe that little twinkling dot in the sky is Saturn and has rings around, but hopefully I try and educated people about the wonders up there, but most leave scratching there heads confused as hell.

Theres a 9 year old that lives next door to me who has ADHD, he came out the one night and saw Saturn, he was going on about it all day at school and his teacher called him a lier (which is pretty disgusting tbh) so we invited her around and she saw it for herself. Now I have been asked if they arrange a night if I could go into school in the daytime with my telescope and explain about space and hose the scope works, and then on the evening have a few hours so the parents and kids could come and have a look.

Get paid for it too!

Kain

[spudicus]

Nice one Kain, and it beggars belief that a Teacher of all things could show such ignorance. Well done for proving the lad right!

[themos]

We had a little bring-and-share at our place on Friday. Parents from the twins' class. I had the scope out and I think most of them had a peep at Luna and Saturn. The usual blend of "wow"s and religious exclamations It was also the first time I got to try Rus's 10mm Plossl e/p. There was wide amazement that the rings could be seen with a semi-toy instrument. One guy said he'd seen Saturn before, at La Palma, but only through an electronic imaging system. Probably something like the one that produced this. Well, this is Oxford, after all.