Another outreach session with clear skies, and an experiment with binoviewers

[RobertI]

Another successful outreach event last night organized by the Dedham Vale Society, the third outreach session in a row with clear skies! This time the location was a field behind the Anchor Inn in Nayland.

As it was solar system only due to the bright moon, I took my 102ED Starwave with binoviewers, and left the C8 behind. The use of BVs was a bit of an experiment and I was not sure how well it would work for outreach. The upshot was that the setup went down extremely well, with the low power views (57x) of the moon drawing gasps from many there, and I have to say seeing the full disc of the moon through BVs is quite something. Only a couple of people struggled with the BVs, and the workaround was to just close one eye! I think even a couple of the experienced astronomers became BV converts.

Surprisingly, low power views of Jupiter and Saturn were also really nice through the BVs and much easier to manage on my manual setup. I’ve found that two eyed viewing makes everything look bigger anyway, so 57x seemed more like 80-100x in cyclops mode, so perhaps that’s why it worked.

There was a good range of scopes there, including a CPC11 and 10” Newt for eyepiece viewing, and a 5” Newt and Askar lens showing real time images. It was a good couple of hours, despite the cold (frost on the scope by the end) and it was nice to meet with the gang and share our skies with around forty people. A hot meal in the pub afterwards was just the ticket. 

Edited November 26, 2023 by RobertI

[Zermelo]

10 minutes ago, RobertI said:

Another successful outreach event last night organized by the Dedham Vale Society, the third outreach session in a row with clear skies! This time the location was a field behind the Anchor Inn in Nayland.

As it was solar system only due to the bright moon, I took my 102ED Starwave with binoviewers, and left the C8 behind. The use of BVs was a bit of an experiment and I was not sure how well it would work for outreach. The upshot was that the setup went down extremely well, with the low power views (57x) of the moon drawing gasps from many there, and I have to say seeing the full disc of the moon through BVs is quite something. Only a couple of people struggled with the BVs, and the workaround was to just close one eye! I think even a couple of the experienced astronomers became BV converts.

Surprisingly, low power views of Jupiter and Saturn were also really nice through the BVs and much easier to manage on my manual setup. I’ve found that two eyed viewing makes everything look bigger anyway, so 57x seemed more like 80-100x in cyclops mode, so perhaps that’s why it worked.

There was a good range of scopes there, including a CPC11 and 10” Newt for eyepiece viewing, and a 5” Newt and Askar lens showing real time images. It was a good couple of hours, despite the cold (frost on the scope by the end) and it was nice to meet with the gang and share our skies with around forty people. A hot meal in the pub afterwards was just the ticket. 

That's interesting, Rob - I'd not thought of taking binoviewers to an outreach session.
Which eyepieces were you using, and what TFOV were you getting?
Did you find that many people were needing to adjust the gap between the EPs to suit their face profiles?

[RobertI]

19 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

That's interesting, Rob - I'd not thought of taking binoviewers to an outreach session.
Which eyepieces were you using, and what TFOV were you getting?
Did you find that many people were needing to adjust the gap between the EPs to suit their face profiles?

I was using the WO 20mm eyepieces with the 1.6 GPC giving just over one degree FOV. I did let people know that they could adjust the inter-pupillary distance, but most people seemed happy with the way it was - I did adjust it for a couple of the younger visitors though. I think your average member of the public is not so bothered by perfect focus and inter-eyepiece distance as us fussy astronomers! I also suggested people remove glasses if they were struggling which seemed to help. What I did find is that people spent longer at the eyepiece with the BVs. Previously with a single eyepiece, people just tended to dip their eye to the eyepiece very briefly, too briefly, but with BVs people were really LOOKING. Definitely worked better than expected. 

Edited November 26, 2023 by RobertI