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Old 17-04-2018, 02:36 PM
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gaseous (Patrick)
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Join Date: May 2016
Location: Brisbane
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I'm making a big assumption here, but I'm guessing a school outreach night probably won't involve driving and hour or two to a dark site, so galaxies might be difficult to pick up, depending on the size of your scope. Even a very large dob may struggle to get any appreciable galaxy resolution in a suburban setting. The same may be said for planetary nebula as well, and for kids at least may lack the wow factor to grab their interest. As others have suggested, the moon is a good place to start. An OIII or similar filter to pick up NGC3372, NGC 2070 and M42. Omega Centauri and a few of the brighter open clusters around Carina/Crux (Jewel Box, Pearl, Wishing Well, Southern Pleiades). DY Crucis near Beta Crucis is a nice carbon star, and others have given some nice doubles.

There was an article in Astronomy magazine a year or so ago which gave a good rundown on how to operate such a night, and from memory the rule was to keep it to a handful of objects. I could dig it out for you if you wanted. 150 minutes might go very quickly if you're answering a lot of questions, changing eyepieces, or have a lot of people to get through. It also might be worth printing a small list of general housekeeping rules issued prior to the night, mentioning things like insect repellent, no bright lights, getting their eyes dark adapted, etc.
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