Telescope Reviews: 3rd Mallincam-enabled Outreach Event at WSO!

Was a smashing success last night!

I had my son's 5th grade class, teacher and assorted parents over (13 kids showed and about 9 adults). We had an EPIC night. Transparency was 5/5, and from 9:15PM until 10:15PM (when the kiddos turned into sleepy pumpkins) it was dark enough to exploit the "no moon". SQM was 20.25 which is very good.

People started arriving around 8:40 when it was still fairly light. I enlisted them to help carry out the table, beverages and cookies, etc... as well as the RTP, and the Dob.

Then I very roughly aligned the RTP, and pointed the Dob at Saturn... to get everyone going! As usual, the adults were actually overall more impressed (intellectually) than the boys and girls. Many thought it was a "picture" (so of course I had to block it and make it go away!)

I also did some initial constellation and finder-star teaching (Dipper, pointers to Polaris, Arc to Arcturus and Spike to Spica).

At this point it was (finally) dark enough for me to align the CGE and get the SN8 going with the MCHP.

My plan all along was:

Saturn - on the dob outside while it was still too light for anything else

Then, when dark enough to FIND them: M13 Globular and M57 Ring... also on Dob.

Interspersed with a "Galaxy fest" using the MCHP.

My first target on the SN8/MCHP was M81 - which, frankly THEY were mostly not super impressed with... it was still somewhat light out, so it basically was doing its best to impersonate a featureless elliptical...

No worries, at this point it WAS dark enough to find M13 outside on the dob... so I did...

THAT went over quite well with everyone... interestingly, though (and opposite of my experience with the 2nd and 3rd graders!) it was the Boys that were most interested in this (and the rest to follow). The Girls were (I think) more interested in acting cool around boys who were, frankly, ignoring them.

The boys were digging all the nice gadgets and technology!

Anyway, while I had a trusted adult supervising outside, I got best possible focus inside, and landed M51...

Then had them all come inside!!!

They were blown away - Colors! Spirals! They asked the usual: how far away, etc... When I was ready to move on, THEY WEREN'T.

So then I said, how about a DIFFERENT spiral (actually my 11 year old son suggested it)... so on to M101...

Again, blown away (it WAS the best I've seen yet - I'm starting to love this SN8 with a Mallincam - may have to try removing some of the spacers, there's lots of background washout operating down below f2.0!)...

Then I said, now for the best part!

Over to M84 and M86, where we landed 6 different galaxies in the incredibly widefield...

They were just amazed... "6 galaxies?" "how big are they" how far away?... "there's billions of stars in each one"

Each was very recognizable, and different from the other... just way too cool, folks! Literally 11 year olds speechless!

I explained how we were basically looking back in time towards the center of the universe (I know it wasn't EXACTLY the center, but close enough!)...

They were just amazed. Many questions about "how powerful is that scope, camera etc." I explained about "power" versus light gathering and aperture...

I then explained roughly how the camera worked.

They thought it was super cool to do it on a TV!

I liked that because of its real-time nature, I was able to do such an outreach from an orange-zone backyard on a perfect almost summer night!

Next good night I'm going to get back on line (maybe that Sparkcast thing Neil and the gang are all het up about!)

We then finished (after closing the roof which they all also thought was cool!), with a nice XT10i viewing of the Ring Nebula... Very nicely greenish last night, and quite clear.

Outreach rocks

And Mallincam Color Hyper Plus makes it easy, quick, fun and most importantly for kids, attention holding!

Unfortunately, in addition to having to stop at 10:15, I had to take one of the boys home (otherwise he would not have been able to attend and he is my sons best friend), which meant I didn't get back home til after 11PM and I was just beat - so, I didn't get to go back out in those conditions!

But, they'll come again!
clear enough skies all!

--------------------
Dave
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