Astronomy Day 2002 at the Highlands Regional Museum A report by Don Kemper Well folks, it appears that yesterday was another successful event for OVAS and the Ashland Highlands Museum. If all the OVAS members who attended had at least half as good of a time as I did, it was a great day for all! And I think that's the way it was. The attendance was about half of what it was last year to my thinking. I handed out about 15-20 OVAS flyers that either Rebecca or myself had printed and copied. Rebecca's went fast as they were much prettier than mine. Several folks took a refractor/reflector handout I had, and I showed about 25 people how to use a planisphere and explained about using a red light. I remember telling many folks, including another scout troop (Tim and Jan showed up in the nick of time to assist them further about OVAS and scouts), about our meetings and public gazes. Perhaps we'll see a few of them sometime. I did may usual "What you do and don't need to get started in astronomy" show and tell. Handing out planispheres was a GREAT idea! Things I/we may want to consider for future events like this: Handouts: One thing I quickly became aware of was the need to provide a non-biased list of suppliers of planispheres, books, and equipment. SEVERAL people asked me where to get such items. My thoughts are having each of you list the name and URL of whatever supplier you have personally bought anything astronomy related from and have had pleasant dealings with. Divide them into two groups- beginner & advanced. Perhaps Books & Charts vs. equipment. If you send your favorite astronomy dealers list to me, I'll make up the handout. I'll let you all look over it for approval before having them printed. Please list ONLY books and charts YOU own and use often. The idea is to recommend what we(you) like and use the most and/or what we KNOW will help beginners and those like me who are just passed the beginning stage. If you want to categorize beginner, intermediate, advanced - fine by me. Whatever. Send me the information and I'll do it. OVAS meeting location/directions and times on handouts. (I'll fix it, but I'd like to know the dates that we change our meeting time.) Small computer labels with OVAS and our URL could be printed and stuck on the planisphere handouts. I did have one in my hand and didn't see any of our information on it. Just a thought. Hands on: I talked with a couple of people who, like our January meeting, had bought telescopes and wanted to know how to use them. That was mostly the reason they showed up! Of course they didn't bring their scope... This would require having a couple of folks available to take on this dedicated commitment, but may well be worth the effort. If someone wanted to do this we could advertise it as such and perhaps establish a particular time for that purpose, sort of like a class/workshop. That way people will not be coming and going right in the middle of instruction- well, maybe. Whoever does this should know about Meade goto gadgets. (I don't.) I told folks that they might be able to get some assistance if they come to a club meeting on a good night when we could go out and set up. Risky, I know. Logistics/Communications: It's ironic that the TV crew was just leaving as we returned from lunch. Perhaps we should order out and eat in shifts. We really need to improve on our lunch time logistics. I don't know how many people were there when we weren't. Several displays were left with no one to interpret anything for visitors, including my area. I would be willing to stay and eat there if someone brought back my order or just order out. Thanks to Jeff and Rebecca for all the work and planning they did for this event. Hats off to them! Thanks also to Tim and Jan for helping me get my stuff back into the vehicle. Much appreciated guys! Now let's just see about getting out for a great night of observing SOON! Let's do it again, folks! Don