Starting out - helping new astronomers

[Gfamily]

A few new members of our Astro Group had recently bought telescopes, but weren't sure about how to get the most from them. So we had a session with 2 or 3 'experienced' users to help out 5 'newbies'. The main problem is that our weather is so dreadfully unpredictable, so planning ahead is always going to be very conditional.

In the end we said, "hang it; if it's cloudy, at least we can go through the motions" and went ahead last Wednesday. In the end, we had some breaks in the clouds and we could see the Moon, Jupiter and the Pleiades.

This was taken fairly early in the evening - showing how to set up being easier when there's a bit of light in the sky.

Very likely we'll do something similar next autumn, when it gets dark at a reasonable hour.

[John]

My society (Bristol AS) has two "telescope surgeries" each year with a similar purpose.

We meet in central Bristol so actually observing during those sessions is usually not practical but we do invite attendees to bring their scopes to our out of town observatory to get some "under the stars" experience.

I enjoy those sessions a lot 🙂