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Last of the three astronomy nights was held last night with an excellent attendance, probably similar to last week. With a big bright gibbous Moon in the sky, I did take up the laptop & webcam, which helped ease pressure on the queues. I took pains to point out that there is NOTHING like the view through an eyepiece though, so there was great circulation around both the telescopes and the laptop. The kids particularly seemed to enjoy watching the Moon & Jupiter on the laptop. And the kids were really interested and asked all sorts of probing questions!
Seeing was reasonably good so the (cheap) webcam views were fairly sharp. Was able to point out lots of craters and 'seas', the difference between terminator views & those of fully-illuminated areas, etc. Jupiter and its Galilean moons fascinated everyone, as usual! After I shut the laptop down we progressed into some deep sky viewing - it was a clear night and despite the Moon there were some reasonable views of things like the Great Nebula in Orion.
Naked-eye, the brighter band of the Milky Way was easily visible as was the LMC. The SMC was a little more difficult. Altitude helps!
Cheers -
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