Lunar Eclipse - public event turnouts

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Hey all

How did your own events turn out? What sort of club & public numbers attended?

Before our club President, John, gets to post the results for us, I will.....

The Macarthur Astronomical Society had just over 250 members of the public turn up to the domes at the University of Western Sydney to see 18 of our members and through 24 of their telescopes. There were binoculars and dozens of cameras too.

Everyone had a great time. The weather was letter-perfect (no cloud, no dew and nice & warm).

There was a write-up about our event in the Daily Telegraph on page 3.

Thanks to all who attended - I had a ball as did everyone else.

Cheers
Chris

[astronut (John)]

Thanks Chris,
I am a very proud president, with that sort of turnout from the public I'm sure we rivaled even the biggest societies.
With a total membership of 60, M.A.S had 1/3 of them attending telescopes last night.
To the many people I spoke to, there was nothing but compliments on the quality of our club.
Am I proud of my mob?..............You Betcha!!!!

[silvinator]

Hey everyone,

Our turnout at Regatta Point here in Canberra was small but the event was still a lot of fun. Our society, the ANU Black Hole Society (I am the Vice President) had about 15 of our members along throughout the night. Two Canberra Astronomical Society members also joined us, John Blank and Andrew White (President). Andrew brought his family along and the kids had a great time looking through my telescope. I brought the 10 inch meade. One of our BHS members also made it a family affair and brought along his two adorable kids. There was a lot of "Daddy, daddy can I have a look yet?". One kid exclaimed: "Look, the moon's getting eaten." I asked him who was eating it and he said, "the monsters! We have to stop them and squish them!" (or something to that effect. Sometimes I don't quite understand what the lil ones are saying :p). I have to thank John from CAS for answering all people's questions as they waited for me to centre the moon time and time again. That was really good of him dealing with the public for us, so a great big thank you to him (I'm not sure if he's a member of IIS but I'll publicly acknowledge him anyway).

We also had a few members of the public wanting a look through my telescope which was a great feeling. I had a lot of "wow's" and "ooh, that's amazing". There were also a few smaller groups of people set up along the shores of Lake Burley Griffin with their cameras and binoculars.

I nearly had a heart attack though when I saw one guy (I think he was from my society...) trying to move my telescope (which had the dec and RA locks on by the way) to centre the moon again. I asked him if he would like me to move it for him...never again will I turn my back on my scope.

The weather was great for the duration of the eclipse. There might have been some very high, very light cloud but it was not very noticeable. There was also a light wind which actually blurred the image very slightly at times. But other than that, it was a nice, clear night.

So that was the night for our club. I'd say it went well. I had a great time. What an eclipse! I'll never forget it; it was my first one ever. I hope everyone else had a great time and enjoyed themselves as well.

Clear skies,
Silvie

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

From our town of 250 people we had approx 50 turn up. 1/5th of the population

One funny story of the night: A Police car pulled up fast from high speed, shone his searchlight on us, and rapidly walked over to us. As he was walking over he said 'Looking at the Eclipse huh?".
Then quickly asked where Morchup Road is. We could see this cop was in a hurry so a few of us pointed and said "2nd on the left". Then one lady yelled out "Hey, ya gonna look at the Eclipse while your here?" So the cop doubles back, looks in the Telescope, give it a quick focus, looked for about 10 seconds and said 'WOW!", then ran back to the Police car and sped off!

I'm glad he could take time out from his apparent emergency to look through the telescope