Newsgroups: sci.astro

	I wrote this just to pass along something I enjoyed and I think
might be interesting. 

	Last week I received a telephone call from a teacher at a local 
school. They would like to have our astronomy club come to their school and
bring telescopes for the students and parents if we were interested. We go
to many schools during the year so this was no problem for me. How many would
be attending? About 60 or so. What would be the age spread? Oh 8-14 for the
students, and well above that for the parents. A date was set and we called 
around and lined up some telescopes and their owners. 

	The event started well before I arrived as several of our group 
set up to show the sun with various filters and projection devices. One of
our group had brought along the clubs recently finished pseudo-solaris. This 
scope was fabricated from a old 60mm refractor and a Daystar t-scanner and ERF.
Our club raised funds for about a year, a buck here and 5 bucks there, to
buy the .7 Angstrom T-scanner. We had to buy and adapt a 2 inch focuser to
mount the 1.5 inch -12inch F/L barlow lens that raised the effective f-ratio
from f/16 to f/32. The T-scanner really likes parallel light but f/30+ would
do fine. Anyhow I digress, the students were milling about peering at and
through each telescope and peppering each adult with endless questions.
Most wnated to know why that one telescope had a red sun while another had
a blue one or a white one or a orange one. Our member stressed safety in solar
observations and proper filters.

	As the sun moved lower in the west we all adjourned to a BBQ and 
visited as we stuffed ourselves. 

	After an hours diversion some of us returned to the basketball courts 
where we had set up our telescopes. We had a JMI 18", a Optical Craftsman 8"
Newtonian, a Questar 3.5", a Compustar equiped C-11 SCT, a 80mm Meade refractor,
and I brought my 17" Alt-az. 
	
	As we had a nice waxing gibbous moon I pointed the 17 at it and soon 
started attracting customers. Most seemed amazed that you could use a telescope
in the daylight. Soon we had Saturn in the blue sky of early evening. After the 
sun had set we soon picked out Venus and were starting to gather more 
interested kids and adults. As dusk deepened into astronomical twilight we were
able to pick out a few bright doubles then fainter stuff as darkness blended
into the urban skyglow of Santa Clara. With 3rd Magnitude stars being tough
to pull out of a bright sky we did our best to find objects for the kids. 
Bigger scopes really help in urban settings, M15 a faint fuzzy patch in an 8"
was actually showing stars in the 17. Andromeda was a big disappointment to
experienced hands but to the uninitiated a distant galaxy is still magic.

	We explored star colors with binary pairs, M57 served nicely to 
start a discussion on stellar evolution. One young lady of 10 or 11 even 
climbed up a 5 foot ladder to look through the 17 several times, complete 
with leg braces and two canes. I had one young lad of 14 or so show an 
interest in the 17 and how it worked, so I showed him how to track and let 
him run it for a while. He and his friends seemed to enjoy themselves. Later
I put a 14mm Meade super wide field in the 17" and had each person scan the
Moon at 140X. Some students wanted to know how much things cost and were
surprized that people actually made their own telescopes.

	Unfortunately this was a monday evening, a school night and the kids 
had to be at class early the next morning.  At 9:30 the lights started to 
come on and our audience disappeared.  We chatted about what a pleasent evening
we had and how the kids reacted to the event and what they had seen. We packed 
up and headed home not the least disappointed to have missed Monday night 
football.


	Jack Zeiders

Newsgroups: sci.astro