IAS Friday night in Sandymount a bit of outreach

The moon always looks great in my scope. Abategnius and its central mountain
dominated the terminator. The area around Hyginus and Ariadaeus looked awesome but I was
too busy talking to consider a sketch.




We had several families come down for a look .




Jupiter was too low , but we shared Mars , M42 , the first quarter moon
and pointed out constellations to our visitors.



Michael talks telescopes to a visitor , Liam is showing Mars in the background.


Liam Smyth , David Brannigan , Michael Murphy, Val Dunne , Fred ? , John O'Neill, Robin Moore
and myself talked astronomy and shared the night sky for two hours with about 40
people who stopped to look and chat.

Deirdre Kelleghan
Vice Char IFAS
Outreach IFAS
National Coordinator Astronomers Without Borders Ireland .
www.irishastronomy.org/
www.deirdrekelleghan.com/
twitter.com/skysketcher

It was a great evening all right.

Robin Moore was there as well with his binoculars.

I'm not who Fred ? is:) .

Michael.

Just added Robin , Fred was French he came along with his family and a small
scope which he set up to show the moon.

Deirdre

Great job guys and gals.

I had no idea there was an outreach night as I would have turned up. Maybe the next time.

Paul

Hey, Who got the 10 inch Flextube Auto tracking dob and didn't tell us or post a review!!

lunartic wrote:

Great job guys and gals.

I had no idea there was an outreach night as I would have turned up. Maybe the next time.

Paul

Ditto!

We must smell, Paul :lol:

Looks like there was plenty of scopes though.

Anyone know why we never do this kind of thing on the Prom in Bray? Arguably a lot more walkers on Bray Prom and I can tell you from living down there that its not thug central down there or anything like that.

Even in terms of that demographic I felt guilty about profiling lads based on their appearance. You know, real rough looking lads with the trackie bottoms tucked into white socks. Last year I was out in the front yard for an hour or so, actually my last session with the Orion XT12i. 2 Lads popped their head over the gate and said, "Here, what ya doin bud", "Looking at Saturn", " Ah go on, Giz a look". I have to say I got a bit worried and didn't know how they might react if I said no. Was this a ruse to get in? I reluctantly opened the gate and let them in, picking up the heavy maglite...just in case Turns out they really did want a look and stayed for about 10 minutes. *&$^ Me, dats amazin' #%#%#%^ Hell, iz dat de rings. Wanted to know about Saturn, wanted to know how the scope worked etc.

It really taught me a lesson, not to judge a book by its cover and to give more people the benefit of the doubt.