IAS Outreach on Friday 23rd and Sat 24th

Here are some photo's from Sandymount.

We had 5 scopes and about 40 or so people wandered by to look at the Moon, and later on, Mars and Saturn.

Michael.

Weather forecast isn't looking too great for the Bray Promenade event tonight lads. Typical!! Forecast for Sunday night is Clear!

Its raining here in Bray now

Good evening, Micheal. Thank you once again for organizing last night's observing event at Sandymount. It is amusing how the weather was so good for us all. The highlights for me were seeing Saturn rings so narrow and the rings' shadow on the planet -lovely jet black at 75X, M45 Pleiades 4 degrees from Venus, splitting Algeiba at 40X, 75X and 90X, and finally Rupes Recta at an incredible 224X. My friend Paul insisted on seeing the Moon this big! And thank you Micheal Murphy for the great photos. It seems I am getting famous or is it the scope?

Thanks again, Aubrey.

flt158 wrote:

It seems I am getting famous or is it the scope?

It's you Aubrey, honest.:laugh:

Looks like a good night was had, a pity I had to miss it.

Paul

Finally got to do the write-up:

The IAS held a public observing session in Sandymount on Friday 25th April as part of Global Astronomy month.

Three IAS members, Val, Robin and Michael turned out with their telescopes and binoculars to show the public the moon. Two friends Aubrey and another Michael also turned up with their scopes to help out. The weather forecast was not great with 100% cloud cover forecast but we decided to go anyway. When we arrived, there was a nice gap in the clouds with the Moon in the middle. It was still bright when we started but that did not effect the reaction from the crowd including “Oh Wow, There are mountains the Moon. Dad, can I have a telescope”. As it got darker the clouds cleared further and we were able to show passers by Saturn and Mars. This brought further gasps of amazement which were enhanced when we said that the rings of Saturn were close to edge on at the moment and it normally looks more spectacular. One person arrived with a newly acquired telescope and we helped them set it up (after a tense moment where part of an eyepiece which had been left in the holder fell onto the primary with a ding and, thankfully, not with a crash). Once setup we pointed the scope at the Moon and the owner was blown away and left with promises of practicing more with the scope. We finished up at 10.30 and about 40 people had looked through our scopes.

Many thanks to all who turned up and gave their time.

Michael.