event took place last night and into the early hours of Thursday morning under the banner of IFAS IYA2009 and 100 Hours of Astronomy. BTW, can I hereby apply for retrospective registration and permission!!
So anyway, I pulled 2 wheeley bins over to the edge of the parking spaces after I pulled my car back and strung up a length of string between the few bins with several IFAS posters attached. In effect advertising and crowd control to stop people walking out in front of traffic combined.
Why did I just assume it wasn't worth trying. Why didn't I pop it in the focuser for a laugh earlier!! The view of Saturn at 428x was fantastic. The seeing was phenominal!!! Huge image scale, Equatorial bands, gap between the disc and the rings, razor sharp shadow of the rings on the disc and instead of the straight line across the disc, one could see the tilt of the rings and them curving around the back of the planet. I only wish I could have shown most of the people this view instead of the much smaller less detailed view at 187x.
Salt of the earth are a lot of us Bray folk!!
showing the moon and the planets!" There were cars stopping at the junction opposite the shop and rolling down the windows looking over and wondering what was going on. A gesture by myself to come over and have a look had them pulling in off the road and hopping out of the car to come over for a look. Taxi drivers, and get this. I had 2 Female Gardai on foot patrol come over for a look. Saw one of them talk into the walky talky and 2 minutes later 2 squad cars pulled up and another 5 Gardai got out and came over for a look. 3 of them only had a quick look before hopping back in one of the cars but for about 15-20 minutes Bray was down 4 Gardai who were......Busy!! The Green Laser pointer that had been drawing Ohhh's and Ahhhhs all night stayed in the pocket for the duration of the stay of the boys and girls in blue however
The first K.A.S (Keithy's Astronomical Society)
Basically I was inspired after reading Stevie's and EPK's posts on Wednesday night. I then woke up this morning and logged onto the forums and read Deirdre's rallying call to get out there and do something. For a short while I considered giving Deirdre a buzz and asking her did she need another Scoper out at Dunsink. Then I thought to myself, Feck It!! What about poor Bray!!
I decided No, I was going to set up outside our own shop that night instead all on my lonesome. Before my shift in work I set about printing off some Logos for the scope. Couldn't find any IFAS scope logo's so I did a Print Screen on the 100hours logos and opened it up in Paint.net cropped out my desktop and manually added IFAS to them. I also found the IFAS 100hours poster PDF's Printed my details onto them and printed a few of them off too.
Did my shift in work and got off at 6pm, grabbed the Astronomers favourite delicacy...PIZZA..Yum Yum, hopped into the shower and then down to print of some handouts in the form of Aprils SkyMap and a some Lunar maps. Dummy here forgot to hand them out in the end!!
Then it was outside to set up. I had moved my car into position to hold the spaces that morning and also used a traffic cone I had lying around. Had to wave off a few prospective parkers during the day with...."Sorry Mate, Theres a Skip coming"
I set up the scope about 8:30pm and packed up at........1:00am !!!
I was nervous as heck, doing this on my own, "What if people ask me something I don't know, What if there are guriers giving me hassle....what if no one turns up!!" (because I didn't advertise in the shop till that morning because this was such an impromptu session)
Well I needn't have worried. No one asked me anything I didn't know, No gurriers gave me hassle and as for no one turning up?? Hows about 50 or 60 distinct viewers throughout the night!!
I was run off my feet answering questions, plugging IFAS/100Hours/IYA2009, moving the scope to new targets. I only had time for 1 smoke in the whole 4 and a half hours!!
I only remembered/had time to take pictures of a fraction of the groups of people that came and went throughtout the course of the night. There was only about 10 minutes 2 or 3 times in the night where there were only 2 or 3 people at the scope or I was on my own. The rest of the time there were usually 6-7-8 people at least.
The scope performed like a champ. I'll be sad to sell her soon to make room for KnightRider. If they thought my modded XT12i was, "What a beast...its huge...must be worth 1000's, jaysus thats some machine..etc"..well wait till they get a load of Knightrider the next time!!
Anyway, the Equatorial PLatform did its job and provided flawless tracking all night long. What a saving grace that is for public events like this. I remember the Glendalough event in March 08 with the same scope but without tracking and I had to re-adjust the scope every few seconds. Tonight with the tracking was brilliant. Just swing the scope to whatever someone wanted and I wouldn't have to touch it again unless someone grossly knocked. Then the Telrad came into its own where I could re-align from the back of the scope without having to move someone away from the eyepiece or off the stepladder. I was setup almost directly under 2 streetlights and the Lightshield and full OTA flocking provided sterling service in maintaing high contrast bright views with inky black space framing the objects. The dual 12v Cooling fans and boundary air removing ring baffle helped the mirror deliver ultra crisp views all night long from begining to end. Only towards the end did Dew rear its ugly head but the dew heater strips took care of that in short order.
So what did we look at?? The Moon at 187x predominently with short periods at 88x. We looked at Saturn at 187x predominently and I switched between the 2 targets all night. I think nearly everyone that stopped by got to see both of these targets at the very least. Earlier in the night I also showed the other usual suspect, M42. Was very low and deep in the murk from the off but the first 10 people or so got to look at that too. My one regret about EP choice during the night?? Well right at the end of the night about 12.30am someone asked my what my highest mag was. I told them 428x with my 3.5mm. but that I only got to use it 3 times in the last 18 months as the seeing hardly ever supports it. I decided to throw it in the focuser for the laugh....."Er....Those craters on the terminator are kinda looking pretty darn sharp at 428x!!" Hold on till I move the scope to Saturn....OMG!!!!!!
It goes without saying that I enjoyed this impromptu immensely. I had people thanking me over and over, "This is amazing..I've never seen anything like it, I've never looked through a telescope before, Thank you, thank you, this is an amzing community minded thing you are doing" and also the obligatory, " Oh My God!!....Jaysus Chr...! $#%@ing hell!!
I had people shaking my hand while thanking me, people offering me money!! "You aren't charging!!", People wanting to know when the next event would be. There were people phoning friends and family to come down for a look, there were people arriving and telling me how strangers up the street had told them, "Go down the road there to the shop, theres a guy with a huge telescope
What can I say. There is nothing like the vicarious kick one gets out of watching other people shout O..M..G !! when they look at something they have never seen 'for real' in a telescope.
I had an absolute blast.
You know, that John Dobson fella was a clever chappie. Mr/Br Dobson. I Salute you Sir.....both for inventing the Dobsonian Telescope and for inventing Sidewalk Astronomy!!