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ETX and niece


Kn4fty

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We had a small break in the clouds tonight so I set up the ETX 70. My 12 year old niece was excited about getting to see something in it. I aligned it with Vega and Altair, then plugged in the Moon. My niece set her step stool down and I showed her how to focus. She looked into the EP, focused, then said WOW!! I put a different EP in and once again she said WOW!! She looked for awhile while asking questions about the moon. Next we moved the scope to Mars. It was tiny, but still she looked for awhile. I told her about some of the surface features my brother and I saw in 2003. Suddenly she yells "I can see it!" Referring to the polar cap. Then the clouds covered the planet. Quickly I moved the scope to Albireo. She initially only saw the one star. I told her how to use averted vision and then she saw the other. Unfortunately neither was showing color due to the clouds. After a minute it was too cloudy to continue. It was a quick session, but a good one. I just let her have control of the scope and she seemed to enjoy. Tomorrow night is supposed to be clear, so we'll take the scope out again tomorrow night. She wants to see the Andromeda Galaxy.

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Great outreach and a new budding astronomer in progress.

The wonder of a child exploring the universe through a simple instrument comes so naturally. It is just a pity that some of us get so used to it (or make extracting that last photon so important) that the "wow" moments can get lost along the way.

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Thanks Philip. She even helped me build the new battery box for it before we took it out.  We looked all over for a box for 6 AA batteries, but could only ones that held 2. We ended up buying 3 of those. So she helped me solder them together. She was my extra hands lol.

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