Last night, the Brazos Valley Astronomy Club was invited to show off the stars to a group of adult special needs campers. The name of the organization running the camp was called Beautiful Abilities. The campsite was several miles out in the country, which boded well for our observing, if the weather would decide to cooperate.
By the time I arrived, the sun had just set and a couple of club members were already there. Ginger was indoors with the campers doing science demonstrations that dealt with conditions on the Moon (craters), Venus (vulcanism), and Jupiter (thick gas atmospheres). Her audience was enthralled with the "experiments" and it was also getting them excited about what they would see later through the telescopes. Dave and his wife were also there and helping Ginger with preparations and with recording the occasion.
I watched for a bit, but it was getting dark fast, so I had to go outside and get Zoomie (my 12-inch Dobsonian reflector) set up. Before I had finished, one of the campers was already curious and started up a conversation. She introduced herself and then asked me what I was doing. I explained that I was setting up my telescope for tonight.
"What's a telescope?"
"It helps you to see the stars and planets real close."
"Oh! Can I look?"
"Well, the stars aren't out yet, but you can look at the telescope if you want."
She came over and I let her see her reflection in the primary mirror. She enjoyed that and kept me company, making small talk while I finished getting ready.
Glancing up, the partly cloudy sky was getting even more cloudy. Most of the clouds were high thins, but it might make for another difficult night.
By now, Ginger had finished with her demonstration and everyone was coming outside. Dave set up his 8-inch Dob and Mark arrived about this time as well, bringing a refractor.
Venus was the first to appear, of course, and she was shining regally in the deepening blue sky. Even the clouds were hesitant to cover her. Remembering my success a couple weeks ago, I attached my phone to the eyepiece to show the planets to several at once. I used the manual camera settings to adjust the brightness and contrast of the sky, as well as the zoom, so everyone would get the best view possible. Her gibbous phase was obvious, but I could tell the atmospheric seeing wasn't that great.
After several minutes, Jupiter started peeking out behind a layer of thin clouds. It was still light enough that the clouds were obstructing views of all but the brightest moon. Still, everyone was impressed with getting to see Jupiter and one of its moons. Later, as the sky darkened and the clouds moved off from the area, all of the moons appeared and even a few cloud bands. This really impressed the campers.
A few more stars were visible as twilight deepened. I swung around to Vega and Arcturus and then to Zubenelgenubi (near Jupiter right now, so extra easy to find). Zubenelgenubi is a nice wide double star. Most had never heard of binary star systems before and were amazed that one sun could orbit another.
Well, if two stars were good, how about three? I pointed to Mizar and Alcor next. "Wow! Come look at this!" were typical of the responses.
I heard Dave say he was looking at the Double-Double and that garnered a lot of wows as well.
One of the women campers came up to me and said she had vision trouble and it was difficult to see through the eyepiece, so she was really happy she could look through my camera to see things. It made things much easier for her. That's something that's good to know for future outreaches.
Amazingly, the clouds were dispersing quickly, revealing more stars than I was used to seeing. I was having a bit of difficulty orienting myself to a sky where I could see more than just the barest of outlines of the constellations. Not that I was complaining, mind you. On the inside, I was giggling like a school girl.
Dave and I both pointed to M13. I tried to pick it up with the camera, but it wasn't quite bright enough to see well. Time to take off the camera and go to eyepiece observing, at least until Saturn had risen a bit higher. I popped in my 11mm eyepiece and took aim again. The cluster could easily be seen even in the finder scope. Through the eyepiece, it blew my socks off. More stars than I could possibly count. This view impressed everyone.
I swung half a field over to the galaxy NGC 6207. It was faint, but definitely there. An oval smudge of light. It was neat that I could get part of M13 in the same field.
About this time, most of the campers decided to head off to bed, but some of the staff stayed behind to get some more views through the telescope. Before leaving, one of the campers said she had always loved the stars, but she had learned more about them tonight than she had in her entire life. This made me happy that we could help her in some small way.
I noticed Corvus the Crow had flown out of the cloud cover. The sky was so nice here, how would galaxies look in my scope? I took aim at M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. Even at low power, I was surprised at how big it looked. I could easily see this galaxy in my back yard, but it looked smaller. Here, the edges were more defined.
I heard someone say they wanted to see the Ring Nebula, so I pointed to that one next. I didn't really bump up the magnification, but I didn't need to. The smoky ring was more than obvious, even to the inexperienced observers. Telling them that this was a star that had blown off its outer shell of gas as it neared the end of its life got their attention. Telling them that a similar fate will befall our sun in a few billion years made one man comment, "I sure hope I'm retired before then."
My mind was racing to decide what to look at next. I didn't have my observing lists with me, and I didn't really want to hog up my telescope tracking down faint fuzzies while others were wanting to look at things. So I decided to stick to mostly Messier objects. Even the Messier galaxies were faint and difficult from my back yard, so they would be my targets.
I located M82, the Cigar Galaxy, in Ursa Major. The cigar shape was big and obvious, and it showed a lot of mottling near the center from the presence of gas and dust.
Next up was its neighbor, M81. A very bright core with a long oval disk. Nice, but not as memorable as M82.
I put in the 18mm and took a peek at the Leo Triplet. I couldn't fit all three of them into the same field, but they were also very nice.
Since galaxies were looking so good, how about M51, the Whirlpool? I saw a bit of fuzz in the finder at about the right spot, so looked through the eyepiece. Holy Colliding Galaxies! This was jaw-dropping. Both galaxies were easily visible, including the spiral arms of M51. As I looked longer, I started to even notice mottling of dust lanes within and betwen the spiral arms. I wanted to stare at it all night, but the others needed to look at it, too. Even our hosts were able to see the spiral structure. The only other time I've seen M51 look even close to this good was in 20-inch Starmaster.
I next swung over to M4. It showed good resolution, but most of the crowd had gone home and compared to what I showed them earlier, it wasn't anything special. I decided not to bother showing anyone else and move on to the next target.
Saturn was still a bit low, so I took a little break, just to sit back and enjoy the sky. The temperature was perfect, there was a slight breeze, and the distant clouds were showing a bit of sheet lightning. Everywhere else, the sky was crystal clear. I wish I could just spend the night here under the stars.
I tried my hand at a couple of Milky Way shots with my phone, but I was trying to rush them a bit and didn't get my settings nailed down quite right. It will be a lot easier in a month or so when the Milky Way starts rising earlier.
Finally, Saturn had risen enough to attempt to take a look. Once more, I attached my phone to my 25mm eyepiece and popped in my barlow. Saturn was boiling in the atmosphere and it was difficult to even make out the Cassini Division. Still, I showed it off to the remaining small crowd and everyone was thrilled to see the rings.
With that, I decided the show was over. It was 11:30pm, I had a 35 minute drive home and had to go to work in the morning. This was a great evening. Everyone enjoyed the science demonstrations and telescope views and the weather finally cooperated with us.