[Chaos-l] Astronomy Day at Little River Park: April 24

[mdlemon at lemons-bend.com]

Excellent! Something up here in my area for once!

I would love to bring my scope and help out in any way needed. I'm not  
overly knowledgeable about the esoterica of astronomy, but I can show  
folks how a reflector works, for sure.

Mike

Quoting Jon Stewart-Taylor <joncst at earthlink.net>:

> Hi all.  Please mark your calendars for Saturday, April 24.  CHAOS and
> Little River Park will be celebrating Astronomy Day, starting at  3:00.
>  The park people are Very Interested in helping us make this a
> success, and the rangers have already talked about making this an
> annual event.
>
> I've reserved the meadow and the adjacent large picnic shelter (room
> for about 30 people), so the daytime activities will take place
> regardless of the weather.   The rangers said the park can accommodate
> up to 400 people, so we could get quite a crowd. There is an
> electrical outlet for AC devices, both for daytime presentations and
> for night-time observing.
>
> We (and by "we", i mean CHAOS members and interested members of the
> local astronomy community) will be giving presentations on various
> aspects of amateur astronomy.  If anyone would be interested, we can
> run a "so you've got a telescope gathering dust in your closet"
> workshop, both in the day, helping people set up, adjust, and/or fix
> telescopes, and in the evening to help them actually find/observe stuff.
>
> As mentioned in a previous e-mail, the kinds of things i'm hoping we
> can present include:
> astro-crafts for kids
> starting astronomy
> musical astronomy
> light pollution
> buying and using telecopes
> telescope clinic
> Scale solar system model
> Safe solar observing
> We also may be able to recycle things done at the NCSM "Astronomy
> Days" this weekend.
>
> At the evening observing session, i was thinking we could do stuff like:
> Constellation tour
> Telescope clinic: finding and observing
> Moon
> Saturn
> Star clusters
> Double stars
> Unfortunately, the first-quarter moon will be in the sky all night
> long, transiting around 9 pm, so galaxies and nebulae are going to be
> less than optimum.
>
> If any of that appeals to you, or if you have an activity/presentation
> you'd like to do, please contact me.  The reservation has been made,
> now it's up to us to make this a success.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jon Stewart-Taylor
>
> joncst (at) earthlink.net
>
> 919-967-2912