My first attempt at show and tell

[GlassWalker]

Actually this was about a month ago, but I never got round to writing it up... I was visiting friends "up north" and they had seen my astro photos and were interested to see it for themselves. After a little thought, I packed the PST, a 4' mak, both to be mounted on the astrotrac.

Weather that night was variable, with the sky mostly clear as I arrived. But it was still too early then to go Saturn hunting. When it was late enough, we looked outside and... clouded over. Will we get a chance? Not being short on things to catch up on, we stayed up quite late and after 1am thought we'd have another look outside before heading to bed. Clear! I grabbed the mak on astrotrac (heavier than you think!) and we walked to a park round the corner. This was in the middle of Preston, so LP was horrific. The park was also fully lit at this time. Saturn was the main target anyway, which should be bright enough to punch through. At the park, we found a clear-ish spot between two streetlights where I could see both Polaris and what I thought was Saturn. That's when I realised I forgot to bring the polar scope. Doh! The only thing I could do was look through the hole where it would have gone and just do the best I can by eye. Then I pointed the scope towards Saturn at around 55x magnification and there it was! Cue sounds of amazement that this view was possible with not that massive kit in the middle of a city. It was a zoom eyepiece so I could go up to about 165x which helped a bit. I even tried a 2x barlow but that was pushing too far.

After this, I went into a bit of fail as I knew nothing else to look at! I got my tablet out and tried to find something interesting that could be seen with a small scope, but failed to find even a cluster and gave up at that point.

The PST was looking like it wasn't going to get any use, as it had been cloudy/raining most of the time. On the last day, we spotted a break in the clouds so thought we'd have a go. This was in their back yard, where the sun was visible at the time. I used the tablet compass to find north and hoped for the best for alignment. It was frustrating at first as every time I saw it clear, but the time the others moved out the cloud had came out again. A bit of persistence eventually did reward them with a view. At this point I also broke out my laptop and DMK41 to show what the camera sees, since it is not always easy with the naked eye.

With that, we were done as far as this part was concerned. For the night sky, I guess I should prepare more before and find other targets that may be of interest. As I'm mostly an imager, I don't really know the easy observing targets.

[ronl]

A very good "show and tell", award yourself a gold star *

[pbyrne]

A group of us go out around first quarter moon every month to a local area to show the public some of the sights. I have to admit that I love these public observing sessions, the reaction of people when they see the moon, or Jupiter or Saturn, for the first time is magical, the gasps and the "oh my God". Most people are truly amazed when they see the moon for the first time through a scope, they generally can't believe that the moon looks like that and we can see it so easily.

[Trull]

Depending on the season, AAS sticks to the big showstoppers:

Moon

M42

M45

Planets

Albeiro

M32

Leo Triplet

We have a big solar section - so get Ha, baader herschel wedge, solar film views in early evening sessions as well.

Good effort on the outreach - its always rewarding to reap the "wow" moments.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Really nice outreach effort!