Yesterday afternoon, Warren Bracewell, Tim Cowden and I represented the Brazos Valley Astronomy Club at Fannin Elementary's Math/Science Night. The event was from 5:30pm to 6:30pm, which meant that the Sun would be too low to do much solar observing, but too high to see many celestial objects. But as it turned out, it didn't really matter because the sky had turned cloudy.
The three of us set up our telescopes on the sidewalk in front of the school and waited for the kids to finish with the indoor part of their activities. Tim brought his homemade 8-inch Dob, Warren brought his 10-inch Z-Scope Dob, and I brought both my 12-inch Zhumell Dob and my 80mm Meade refractor.
Despite the dearth of celestial objects to look at, the children enjoyed looking at trees, chimneys, weathervanes, and street signs. Many of them had never looked through a telescope before, so they were suitably impressed with the terrestrial views.
Seeing the image upside down also gave us the opportunity to explain the differences between refractors and reflectors. I had the children look through my corrected-image finderscope and then through the eyepiece of my telescope, so they could see that one kept the image right side up and the other flipped it. For most of the evening, my telescope was pointed at a stop sign across the road. One girl thought the Dob was looking at the back of the sign since the letters were reversed.
I told one boy to look through the front of my telescope because I thought there was a little boy inside there. He looked, saw his reflection in the primary mirror and grinned, "That's me."
In all, I estimate that about 40 people were there, although with some of the same people going back and forth between indoor activities and our telescope, it was difficult to say for certain.
Despite the clouds, everyone seemed to have a good time.