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Session HELD
Thanks to all for the ideas, the session finally went ahead on 24th Oct, my birthday and the date of the Moon/Mercury/Jupiter conjunction which made a very pretty sight as the sun set and meant we had a chance to observe from 6:30 pm onwards despite the time of year, important when the kids are young and need to get to bed (school day next day).
It went pretty well - I had about 25 children and 10 adults (more than planned - a few brought friends along and I had not counted on so much interest from the adults). I had two scopes and tripod mounted binos available and a couple of helpers to ensure that everyone got a change to see all the objects.
We observed:
The conjunction between the 2 day old moon, Mercury and Jupiter. Binos showed all 3 nicely (as did the naked eye!), the scopes showing Moon and Mercury and moon alone.
As it got darker we were able to see the shadowed side of the Moon illuminated by light reflected very pretty Earthshine and make out craters and the maria.
One scope was then switched to Jupiter and three moons Io, Ganymeade and Calliosto showed well, Europa was inside the disk of Jupiter and I could not make it out as Jupiter was very low by the time we moved onto it a higher magnification.
The second scope was pointed to Mercury at higher magnification
Then we did a little tour:
The double star system Rigel Kentarus (they were happy to recognise the pointers and did not know that this is also known as Alpha Cetauri - which includes our closest stellar neighbour - proxima)
47 Tucanae (VCL200)
M7 (Binos)
M8 (ETX90)
We also starhopped two constellations - Scorpio and Saggitarius with the laser pointer which was a big wow.
BAD points -
The ALT clutch on the ETX slipped, tightening it sheared of the adjutment knob - had to point that one by hand after that - and I am a GOTO guy...
I did not get to ALIGN either GOTO scope accurately - this was a new site for me the scopes were only levelled and aligned roughly with a bubble level and a compass. The software alignment required darkness - but would also take time - at that point I had a queue of eagar observers so I never did aligns, the goto was therefore horrid requiring me to star hop onto the objects in a very light polluted site while answering a non-stop stream of questions - and I am a GOTO guy...
Overall it was an enjoyable and challenging evening. I will happily do it again but I will take the time to align and choose a darker site - from the sports field with bright lights at less than 100m away visual min mag was 4.
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