My son Jacob (6 yrs old) is in the Joey Scouts (for 6-7 year olds), and they had a "space" theme last night for their weekly get together.
Unfortunately Jacob couldn't go cause he had conjunctivitis, but I'd already promised I'd take my telescope along for some viewing and talk about space with the kids.
The moon probably would've been the best sight for the kids but alas it's rising too late as we only had between 5:30pm (when it was dark enough to see some stars) and 6pm when they finished. So we look at Venus and Jupiter while the background sky was still quite blue.
After I'd set up and was waiting for them to come out, I was looking at Venus and Jupiter myself and the seeing was really, really good. Venus was an obvious gibbous phase and Jupiter had the GRS transitting. It was the best I'd seen Jupiter in about 3 months.
I used my 9mm eyepiece barlowed @ 2.4x to give the equivalent of a 3.75mm eyepiece @ 333x magnification. And the details were still clear and reasonably crisp! It was a great sight. I
really wished I had my laptop + ToUcam with me
For the kiddies, I used a 25mm barlowed with the 2.4x to give the equivalent of a 10.4mm eyepiece @ 120x, so they had more ER and a bigger lens to look into, and so it didn't move out of the FOV so quickly (I didn't take my platform).
Most of the kids got the grasp of looking into the eyepiece, and Jupiter got the best "wow"'s, as some of the kiddies made out the dark belts and most saw the 4 moons. The best reaction was from some of the parents and the scout leaders who were suitably impressed
They asked a few questions at the end, and of course before long the questions turned into statements like "I know where there's aliens, on the moon!"
Anyway it was a good session, not long enough but it gave the kiddies some excitement.
