Scouts from Hope visit Seagrave
by Bob Forgiel & Dave Huestis
It was another unseasonably warm night that was probably in the lower 60’s. We all made sure the mosquitoes were well fed that night. The two groups consisted of around 25 scouts and 10 adults. We covered all there scout requirements and let them use binoculars and a 12” dob for their remaining requirements. They all had a chance to use the dob and binoculars on M42. We then broke them into 4 groups to visit the different scopes. All 4 of the society scopes were open. Jim H. had one of his scopes setup and had stayed for viewing after the event. I had also noted that Conrad had a scope setup with a Cannon camera and was taking spectrographs with it. He mentioned he had been taking spectrographs of different stars for around 6 months.
Bob F.
Dave H
Jim H.
Jim B.
Conrad
Thursday, March 22: Two gorgeous nights in a row. Call Guiness Book of Records! Two scout groups. This was a much bigger group, and I stayed focused on Jupiter the entire session to allow everyone to see Jupiter and his three moons that night. Ganymede (not visible) was already in transit across Jupiter’s face, while Io was on one side by itself, but was also moving towards Jupiter’s disk. Io would later transit, but Jupiter was lost behind some trees before that happened. On the other side of Jupiter were found Europa and Callisto.
Friday, March 31: Steere Farm Elementary School star party. Unfortunately cancelled due to forecast of 95% cloud cover by 7:00 pm. Our start time was 7:30 pm. The clouds were thickening up by that time and by 8:00 pm the sky was gone. Too bad, because the Steere Farm Coordinator had 130+ signed up. We are going to try to reschedule before the school year ends.
