[Chaos-l] Morehead Eclipse observing

[Richard McColman]

In the unlikely event that the weather breaks long enough for us to 
catch a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse this afternoon, I wanted 
to alert CHAOS members to one of Morehead Planetarium and Science 
Center's policies on public solar observing.

Beginning a few years ago, we at Morehead determined that it is 
inappropriate to conduct public observing sessions using using 
anything other than indirect, or projection, techniques.  Our 
reasoning is this:

Even though there are all sorts of safe solar filters for telescopes 
which allow through-the-eyepiece observing, and amateur astronomers 
use those filters successfully all the time, the visiting public 
doesn't always fully understand or appreciate the technological 
constraints and safety issues if they view through the eyepiece, or 
see others doing so.  Furthermore, despite our best efforts in 
explaining such issues to general public visitors during observing 
sessions, there will always be someone who either won't hear the 
safety explanations, or won't fully appreciate them.  In fact, given 
that most people tend to learn more effectively by doing or seeing, 
rather than by hearing, It's highly likely that some visitors will go 
away from a solar observing session thinking it perfectly acceptable 
to view the Sun directly through a telescope eyepiece, without 
understanding that very special safety technologies must be added to 
the observing equipment to prevent eye damage.  Consequently, if such 
individuals were to later acquire a telescope, or use one someone 
else's scope unsupervised, there are significant chances that their 
misconceptions could lead to eye damage.

Because of the potential for such misconceptions being generated in 
the minds of public observing session visitors, Morehead has decided 
to not make available any direct observing equipment (filter-based), 
at its solar observing sessions, and instead relies solely upon 
projection techniques.  Accordingly, we respectfully request that 
CHAOS members *not* bring any solar observing equipment to Morehead 
solar observing sessions which incorporate anything other than image 
projection.  Although we understand that some experienced observers 
may see this policy as overly-rigid, inflexible, and even bypassing 
superior solar observing technologies in favor of less sophisticated 
ones, we nonetheless feel that the need to minimize future eye injury 
in the visiting public overrides those concerns.

Many thanks, and my apologies for the lateness of this posting.

Richard McColman
Morehead Planetarium and Science Center