| Observer: | Tom Campbell |
| Location: | College Station, Texas (Long: 96°17'W Lat: 30°37'N) |
| Telescope: | Zhumell 12" f/5 Dobsonian |
| Weather: | The sky was overcast. Temperature was in the mid 60s (F) with a slight breeze. |
Tonight, the Brazos Valley Astronomy Club was invited to attend a "Night Under the Stars" by a local elementary school. Two of us club members showed up with dobs: club president Tim had a 4.5" Tasco and I brought my big gun, the 12" Zhumell.
The turnout was great: lots of students and their parents wanted to look through the telescopes. Unfortunately, the clouds also decided to come visit. The sky was completely overcast.
We tried to make the best of a lousy evening for stargazing by turning the scopes towards a few streetlights across the street. Many of the kids were happy to just get a chance to look through a telescope. I was quite surprised to see a long line forming to look at a crossing signal:
The line was this long for over an hour and a half! A few of the parents expressed disappointment that they weren't able to see any planets that evening due to the clouds. I joked that the telescope was aimed at a stop light. They could pretend it was Mars.
For the club, the night was a success. Several people expressed interest in attending the next club meeting. Hopefully, the sky will cooperate a bit better with us then.
Despite the overall good evening, I was surprised at some of the work we still have to do in the area of informal STEM education. For instance, there were several that tried to look through the wrong end of the finder scope and some that were confused in thinking that if they were looking down into the eyepiece, the telescope must be pointed down as well.
These things are understandable - many of them had never looked through a telescope before. They couldn't be expected to know how one worked. But the thing that surprised me most was that more than one parent was genuinely surprised that a cloudy sky would prevent us from seeing the stars.
My work is clearly cut out for me. Now I'm going to go clean the fingerprints and pizza off my eyepieces and get ready for the next outreach. The mission may be impossible, but I've chosen to accept it.