[Chaos-l] First annual Astronomy Day completed

[Jon Stewart-Taylor]

Hi all.  The first annual CHAOS Astronomy Day celebration was from  
4:30 to nearly 10:00.  Due to the short notice and uncooperative  
weather, the turnout was definitely modest, but it was not a bust.  I  
set up the scale solar system model from the Sun out to Jupiter along  
the sidewalk.  Walter brought his refractor and a solar filter.  Mike  
Gallagher brought a handout on Leo and enthusiasm. Mike Lemon and i  
had 10" dobs.  America manned the kids table.

The scale solar system was pretty successful. I took three groups of  
people on "guided tours", and we had a few people to came to visit at  
the sundial after spotting the model on their on.

The day was pretty quiet.  We had only a few visitors, and the Sun  
was clouded out pretty much all afternoon.  We did get in a bit of  
day-time lunar observing, and some good close-ups of the gilded  
letters of the planetarium name.  America handled the few kids who  
showed up with skill and patience.  We talked to a few people about  
buying telescopes, and handed out a batch of the new CHAOS cards.

In the evening the clouds thinned enough that we could do pretty much  
continual moon observing, and got an hour or so of Saturn.  The  
planetarium steered the folks at the evening show to us, and that was  
the largest group we had at one time.

All in all, not a bad day for a first try.  Next year, we'll improve  
on it.

J.
-- 
Jon Stewart-Taylor: joncst (at) arthlink.net
Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://rtpnet.org/chaos/
CHAOS Webmaster and Secretary: chaos (at) rtpnet.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/chaos-l/attachments/20090502/d18d20bd/attachment.htm>