| Observer: | Tom Campbell |
| Location: | College Station, Texas (Long: 96°17'W Lat: 30°37'N) |
| Equipment: | Zhumell 12" f/5 Dobsonian Meade 80mm refractor |
Last night, the Brazos Valley Astronomy Club was asked to put on a star party for the Allen Academy as part of their annual Space Night. The event lasted from 6pm - 9pm, so most of it was during daylight hours. Many students and their parents showed up for the event, which was divided into several sections, including a scale model of the solar system, astronaut training (trying to work with tools with pressurized gloves), a Martian Rover lander game hooked up to a Kinect system, a portable planetarium, and much more.
One of the teachers drove down to NASA in Houston and borrowed some nice displays showing the history of spaceflight and the Apollo program, as well as an astronaut photo-op booth where you could get a selfie wearing a space suit.
I brought two telescopes with solar filters, in the hopes of being able to show off the Sun during the event, but the overcast skies had other plans. So instead, Tim Cowden and I set up the telescopes indoors as part of the "Telescopes and Star Party Prep" area.
A student in our area handed out small flashlights to the other students that came by and showed them how to use a piece of red cellophane and a rubber band to create their own night-vision preserving red light. They were also given the materials to cut out and create their own planisphere.
For our part, we set up our telescopes indoors. With my 12" Dob and Tim's 6" homemade refractor, our area was eye-catching and we were able to easily show the folks the differences between how a reflector and a refractor worked.
A lot of the kids wanted to look through the telescopes, of course. Being set up indoors, I didn't bother putting in any eyepieces, but let the children point my Dob at one of their friends while looking through the focuser tube and see their reflection in the mirror. They thought it was cool that they could not only see their friend, but also their own eyeball staring back at them through the secondary mirror reflection.
It amazed me how many adults came by our booth, saw our telescopes pointed up in the air, and wanted to know what celestial object we were pointed at. I told them simply, "the ceiling." :) Then they would get that Homer Simpson "Doh!" look on their faces and laugh at themselves.
We informed the folks that stopped by that we would try to set up our telescopes outside after dark and let them take a peek at Jupiter, but the clouds might stop us. A couple of the people (again, adults) actually said, "Oh! I didn't think of that! You need a clear sky to see the stars, don't you?"
Unfortunately, the clear skies didn't happen. Tim and I waited around until about 8:45, and there were a couple of holes in the clouds near the horizon, but nothing we could really see any stars through. We packed up and left behind a disappointed crowd of people wanting to see Jupiter, but what can you do?
Of course, the moment I pulled into my driveway, Jupiter peeked through a small hole in the clouds and said, "Peek-a-boo!" but I just stuck out my tongue at the old flirt and went inside to eat a late supper.
Despite the clouds, I had a lot of fun and can't wait to help them out again next year. This was the third year in a row that the star party got clouded out, so our luck will have to change one of these years, right?