Hello astronomy fans. I did my outreach event for the Hidden Bluffs Campground again last night. I had LOTS of kids and we did the solar system scale model and played "Trigonomic Parallax". They had a blast.
Since the Moon was at 1st Quarter, observing started early, at 7:30. The Moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Polaris, Alberio, and M13 was all that we looked at, but people just kept coming by and nobody complained about looking at anything else. Lots of WOW! OMG! Sweet! Cool! and even a Ridicuous! was heard. And one little boy even told me he could see an astronaut walking on the Moon. Watch out Steven O'Meara, you've got some sharp eyed competition on the way. (I knew that Televu Ethos was a good investment.)
The campground turned off the one security light that had always bothered me in the past, which was great, but the valley is still a dew trap, so when I needed to dry out my scope in the van, I just whipped my laser pointer out and did the Starbie constellation thing. They all loved that and quite a few of them were very adept at spotting sattelites going by.
I ended up with at least 40 people through the course of the night, and the last of them didn't head out until 11:30. I told them about the RAC and I think we just might end up with some new faces at the meetings in the future. And lots of Dad's got asked, "Dad, can we get a telescope?" It was a glorious night for astronomy!