Callahan School Star Party 2024
by Dave Huestis
Callahan School, Harrisville
November 7, 2024
By Francine Jackson
It had been many moons since Skyscrapers, Inc., the Amateur Astronomical Society of Rhode Island, had provided a stargazing event for Callahan Elementary School in Harrisville, Rhode Island. Bad weather canceled many events, and the pandemic curtailed our activities for a while as well.
But on November 7, we were finally successful in sharing our love of astronomy with the Callahan Elementary School community.
Like our star party at Steere Farm Elementary School in the same town of Burrillville on October 11, Mother Nature provided clear and cool skies for about 65 guests.
A waxing crescent Moon (a day before first quarter) made a big impression on everyone. Saturn and his rings certainly amazed the visitors. While one can view a myriad of Saturn images on the internet, nothing can compare to the view through a telescope, especially when knowing the planet on that evening was about 851 million miles from the Earth.
As the evening progressed, Jupiter finally rose high enough to observe. His four Galilean moons were easily visible, as were some belts and zones.
Skyscrapers’ members provided a wide variety of telescopes in many sizes: 80mm f/6 refractor; 5-inch Celestron reflector; 12.5" f4.8 dob; 4⅛" (105mm) Astroscan; homemade 8 inch Newtonian on a Meade computerized go to mount.
To provide some observational variety, some views were provided of Alcor and Mizar, the Coathanger cluster, the Pleaides, the Ring Nebula and M13.
Some comments to note:
I received a heartwarming star party report from one of our volunteers, Jim Hendrickson. I am including most of it here:
“After about a decade of cloud-outs, it was great to return to Callahan School on Thursday, November 7 under perfectly clear skies and a 6-day crescent Moon.
When we first arrived, I set up my 80mm refractor and trained it on comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which was moving through Ophiuchus. The comet still displayed a distinct tail, but was perhaps a bit too dim to be worthy of showing for public viewing. The moment felt rather symbolic, because I was attending Callahan School during the last passage of Halley's Comet in 1985-86, which I never did see. Standing in the school's field while observing a comet almost felt like a completion of a chapter that started so long ago. I attempted to get the comet in Chris's 12-inch Dobsonian, but was unable to locate the star pattern in the finder.
Highlights of the night were the Moon and Saturn, but operating a smaller telescope allowed me to showcase objects more suited to wide-field views. I started with Mizar and Alcor in the Big Dipper, which were positioned low in the northwest. When they became too low, I moved to a seasonal favorite, the Coathanger in the Summer Triangle. Most who viewed the asterism could easily see the resemblance. A short time later, the Pleiades were well-positioned, and I kept them in view for much of the rest of the session. Many of the responses were an instantaneous "oh wow!" But there were a couple of "it's just a bunch of stars?" as if there was some other expectation. I guess being set up towards the back of the field, away from the bigger scopes trained on the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter, the Pleiades may have been less impressive.
A little over an hour later most of the guests had left. Francine, John and I stayed a while longer to take in some views of Jupiter through John's 8-inch Newtonian.”
Chris Harkins, using his 12-inch dob started with M13. He said, “A little challenging due to the moonlight washing it out but all seemed to enjoy it especially when I told them to look beside it instead of directly at it and described what it was. Then moved onto the ring nebula in Lyra and explained what it was.”
Francine Jackson commented, “Everyone was fascinated with the Astroscan, but its image of the Moon made them quickly forget how weird it looks. All who were there were very friendly and eager to look, especially several young people. Perhaps we have some budding astronomers in the mix.”
The Moon looked great with Bob Janus’ Celestron 5-inch reflector under 50X. He said he got “a lot of "OOOOs" and "aaaahs" from the younger ones. I tried to send people home with two lunar things to remember: terminator line and earthshine.”
We provided many handouts for our guests that they could use to supplement their astronomical experience over the coming weeks.
Many thanks to the following Skyscrapers members who supported this successful event: Jim Hendrickson, Francine Jackson, Bob Janus, Chris Harkins, John Kocur, and yours truly.
