Solo Impromptu 100Hours Sidewalk Astronomy Event Bray, Ireland

[calibos]

I am just cross posting this thread from my local forums to save on a lot of typing. Hope you like the report.

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The first K.A.S (Keithy's Astronomical Society) :Wink Wink: event

took place last night and into the early hours of Thursday morning

under the banner of IFAS IYA2009 and 100 Hours of Astronomy. BTW, can

I hereby apply for retrospective registration and permission!! LOL

Basically I was inspired after reading Stevie's and EPK's posts on

Wednesday night. I then woke up this morning and logged onto the

forums and read Deirdre's rallying call to get out there and do

something. For a short while I considered giving Deirdre a buzz and

asking her did she need another Scoper out at Dunsink. Then I thought to myself, fec k It!! What about poor Bray!!

I decided No, I was going to set up outside our own shop that night,

instead all on my lonesome. Before my shift in work I set about

printing off some Logos for the scope. Couldn't find any IFAS scope

logo's so I did a Print Screen on the 100hours logos and opened it up in Paint.net cropped out my desktop and manually added IFAS to them. I also found the IFAS 100hours poster PDF's Printed my details onto them and printed a few of them off too.

Did my shift in work and got off at 6pm, grabbed the Astronomers

favourite delicacy...PIZZA..Yum Yum, hopped into the shower and then down to print of some handouts in the form of Aprils SkyMap and a some Lunar maps. Dummy here forgot to hand them out in the end!! LOL

Then it was outside to set up. I had moved my car into position to

hold the spaces that morning and also used a traffic cone I had lying around. Had to wave off a few prospective parkers during the day with...."Sorry Mate, Theres a Skip coming" HeHe! So anyway, I pulled 2 wheeley bins over to the edge of the parking spaces after I pulled my car back and strung up a length of string between the few bins with several IFAS posters attached. In effect advertising and crowd control to stop people walking out in front of traffic combined.

I set up the scope about 8:30pm and packed up at........1:00am !!! LOL

I was nervous as heck, doing this on my own, "What if people ask me something I don't know, What if there are guriers giving me

hassle....what if no one turns up!!" (because I didn't advertise in

the shop till that morning because this was such an impromptu session)

Well I needn't have worried. No one asked me anything I didn't know, No gurriers gave me hassle and as for no one turning up?? Hows about 50 or 60 distinct viewers throughout the night!!

I was run off my feet answering questions, plugging

IFAS/100Hours/IYA2009, moving the scope to new targets. I only had time for 1 smoke in the whole 4 and a half hours!! Hehe.

I only remembered/had time to take pictures of a fraction of the

groups of people that came and went throughtout the course of the

night. There was only about 10 minutes 2 or 3 times in the night where there were only 2 or 3 people at the scope or I was on my own. The rest of the time there were usually 6-7-8 people at least.

The scope performed like a champ. I'll be sad to sell her soon to make room for KnightRider. If they thought my modded XT12i was, "What a beast...its huge...must be worth 1000's, jaysus thats some

machine..etc"..well wait till they get a load of Knightrider the next

time!!

Anyway, the Equatorial PLatform did its job and provided flawless

tracking all night long. What a saving grace that is for public events

like this. I remember the Glendalough event in March 08 with the same scope but without tracking and I had to re-adjust the scope every few seconds. Tonight with the tracking was brilliant. Just swing the scope to whatever someone wanted and I wouldn't have to touch it again unless someone grossly knocked it out of alignment. Then the Telrad came into its own where I could re-align from the back of the scope without having to move someone away from the eyepiece or off the stepladder. I was setup

almost directly under 2 streetlights and the Lightshield and full OTA

flocking provided sterling service in maintaing high contrast bright

views with inky black space framing the objects. The dual 12v Cooling fans and boundary air removing ring baffle helped the mirror deliver ultra crisp views all night long from begining to end. Only towards the end did Dew rear its ugly head but the dew heater

strips took care of that in short order.

So what did we look at?? The Moon at 187x predominently with short periods at 88x. We looked at Saturn at 187x predominently and I switched between the 2 targets all night. I think nearly everyone that stopped by got to see both of these targets at the very least. Earlier In the night I also showed the other usual suspect, M42. Was very low and deep in the murk from the off but the first 10 people or so got to look at that too. My one regret about EP choice during the night?? Well right at the end of the night about 12.30am someone asked my what my highest mag was. I told them 428x with my 3.5mm. but that I only got to use it 3 times in the last 18 months as the seeing hardly ever supports it. I decided to throw it in the focuser for the laugh....."Er....Those craters on the terminator are kinda looking pretty darn sharp at 428x!!" Hold on till I move the scope to Saturn....OMG!!!!!! Why did I just assume it wasn't worth trying. Why didn't I pop it in the focuser for a laugh earlier!! The view of Saturn at 428x was fantastic. The seeing was phenominal!!! Huge image scale, Equatorial bands, gap between the disc and the rings, razor sharp shadow of the rings on the disc and instead of the straight line across the disc, one could see the tilt of the rings and them curving around the back of the planet. I only wish I could have shown most of the people this view instead of the much smaller less detailed view at 187x.

It goes without saying that I enjoyed this impromptu immensely. I had people thanking me over and over, "This is amazing..I've never seen anything like it, I've never looked through a telescope before, Thank you, thank you, this is an amzing community minded thing you are doing" and also the obligatory, " Oh My God!!....Jaysus Chr...! $#%*ing hell!! Salt of the earth are a lot of us Bray folk!!

I had people shaking my hand while thanking me, people offering me

money!! "You aren't charging!!", People wanting to know when the next event would be. There were people phoning friends and family to come down for a look, there were people arriving and telling me how strangers up the street had told them, "Go down the road there to the shop, theres a guy with a huge telescope showing the moon and the planets!" There were cars stopping at the junction opposite the shop and rolling down the windows looking over and wondering what was going on. A gesture by myself to come over and have a look had them pulling in off the road and hopping out of the car to come over for a look. Taxi drivers delivery drivers etc, and get this. I had 2 Female Gardai on foot patrol come over for a look. Saw one of them talk into the walky talky and 2 minutes later 2 squad cars pulled up and another 5 Gardai got out and came over for a look. 3 of them only had a quick look before hopping back in one of the cars but for about 15-20 minutes Bray was down 4 Gardai who were......Busy!! LOL The Green Laser pointer that had

been drawing Ohhh's and Ahhhhs all night stayed in the pocket for the duration of the stay of the boys and girls in blue however. LOL

What can I say. There is nothing like the vicarious kick one gets out

of watching other people shout O..M..G !! when they look at something they have never seen 'for real' in a telescope.

I had an absolute blast.

You know, that John Dobson fella was a clever chappie. Mr/Br Dobson. I Salute you Sir.....both for inventing the Dobsonian Telescope and for inventing Sidewalk Astronomy!!

Oh Yeah....The pics!!

[Helen]

Wow!! That sounds like so much fun!! Well done for taking the plunge and going for it! Its got me thinking......its supposed to be clear tomorrow

Helen

[Talitha]

Thanks for posting... it just doesn't get any better than this!!

[MikeP]

Good for you. What a brave initiative you took

If the public ever think about astronomy it is probably of enormous telescopes, rocket scientists and the like. Showing them what you did with modest equipment in their own High Street may just inspire one or two to have a go themselves.

Mike

[calibos]

Thanks for the kind words Helen and Mike. I think I'll actually repeat the copy and paste with my latest post from my local forum as again its a biggun and it fills in more of the blanks about the night and touches on the reasons why this 'Sidewalk Astromony' (or as we on these 2 islands would call it, 'FootpathAstronomy ' ) is such a great thing to do.

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There were only two 'moments' but they weren't too nailbiting. There was the Italian lady who started to lose her balance on the step ladder and was on her way backwards. Had to quickly swing my arm out and catch her around her back. The only other moment was just a little intake of breath when the old dear on her way home from the bingo was putting some of her weight on the intelliscope handset. I feared the plastic casing might start to crack under her weight(I promise I was worried about her and not the intelliscope handset! ) but didn't really need to worry, she rebalanced herself on the step ladder a second or too later and took her weight off of it.

The only 'scarey' part of the whole thing was the very few times I was on my own, not nervous for my personal safety, nervous kinda shyness in just gesturing random stranger passersby to come over and have a look. They'd invariably end up staying for 15 or 20 minutes themselves and once other passersby saw more than one person standing around and/or looking through scope these passersby would need no gesturing and would cross over the road to us themselves. I think it was kind of like, if I was on my own, people would think I was doing my own personal observing and didn't feel they could interupt, so I'd have to call them over whereas if there were 2 of us or for the most part groups around the scope, people seemed to feel more comfortable coming over to investigate all by themselves.

Its funny, everyone seemed to hang around for at least 15 or 20 minutes (even some of the Gardai, like I said ) and for the most part there was a constant turnover of viewers, ie. there'd be averaging 8 around the scope at any given time and say 2 people who had been there for 20 minutes would say their goodbyes and leave, the 6x 5,10&15 minuters would remain and nearly straight away the 2 that left were replaced by a new 2, if you get my meaning. It was gas the amount of people who would come over to say Thank You, shaked my hand and would say they would love to stay but had to go because they had lost track of time and were now dead late for work, or a date or meeting etc

Such a cross-section of people. I had neighbours and regulars to our shop, I had total strangers just driving or walking by, I had Gardai and Taxi Drivers beside girls dressed up to the nines for their night out now up a step ladder looking through a telescope in their mini-skirts!! Eh...I promise I didn't pick that time to tie my shoelaces! I had French girls, Italian ladies, British gents, Filipino Nurses, Polish builders and Chinese folks. I had gangs of lads with six packs of tinnies, guys in suits and lads in tracksuits called Anto or Damo....

To the last man and woman upon their first look into the eyepiece, silent for a second or possibly uttering "I can't see anything" (hadn't yet put their eyes close enough for the correct eyerelief) but then without fail another second or two later bursting into spontaneous joyous giggley laughter and saying "...Ohh...Ohh..My..God!! Oh Wow!!"

When I was setting up I had one of the cheeky local kids ask me what I was doing and when I told him he says, "Jaysus, thats so random loike" I had to bite my tongue because I kind of took it as a bit of an insult. Later on that night, I realised that the kid was right. It was so random...and that, actually, was the beauty of it!! You had all these unrelated strangers from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds, all on their way to different places to do different things, thinking about this, worrying about that and suddenly out of the blue they all turned a corner or crossed the street and were doing something and seeing something that they never imagined they'd be doing when they woke up that morning nevermind just before they turned that corner. All so, very very.....Random!!

As I said, one of my regrets was not using the 3.5mm at 428x on Saturn a lot earlier as it turned out the seeing was exceptional. Upon reflection, my other regret is not promoting it soon enough or just relying on customers and locals seeing the posters I put in the shop rather than me actively telling all the regulars and locals that they should pop down that night. ie. in work today, every few minutes when regulars and locals would come into the shop, I'd be thinking to myself, "Ah, I should have told them, they would have loved it never mind their kids....Ah, I never told that local family with those young kids..." etc.

Next time I'll be more prepared!

Rest assured Jon, Any nervousnous you may have about this and doing it on your own will evaporate the first time someone comes over for a look. You'll then be on a roll. This sidewalk astronomy lark is so personally rewarding its amazing. I mean I kind of got a taste for this at the one cloud free event I attended down in Glendalough last year but last night really drove it home to me how rewarding it truely is. I now really really understand why say John Murphy puts on the super Ballycullen Starparty in his estate every year and why Deirdre Kelleghan is like the little fluffy Duracell Bunny on steroids running around the country banging the Astronomy drum!!

As Ben Stiller in the Starsky and Hutch remake said.....

DO IT...DO IT....JUST DO IT!!

[ashenlight]

That is such a heartwarming report, it sounds like you had alot of fun. I like to think that alot of those people will go home and pull out their old 10x50 bins or the department store telescope they've had lurking in the attic for years. For me, it's that kind of astronomy - the kind that inspires people to explore the cosmos for themselves - that is the most rewarding part of this hobby (apart from seeing Saturn for the first time through the scope the other day - amazing!).

Well done on pulling it off, you will be in demand now I am sure! Perhaps some talks at local schools?!

Clear skies,

Amanda