Hometown Elementary Star Party

Four dedicated astronomers from OVAS helped out at the school’s function.

This report is by Bill Evans of OVAS/KVAS

I want to personally thank Jeff Ball, Don Kemper, and John Walker for coming out and providing a great night for the parents, teachers, staff, and of course the kids at Hometown Elementary. They were very appreciative and I believe we got a few new astronomers. Jeff had his little Tele Vue 85, John had his C-5+ and the 10" Deep Sky Dob, and I'll let you all guess what Don Kemper had.

Pam Williamson also showed up, I think by accident but maybe on assignment from her paper, but we drafted her into helping also. John Walker had two telescopes and I had my binoculars as well as my C8, with everybody hitting us fast and furious, Pam was a Godsend.

Mars was our featured object of the night, John spent a lot of time with M13, I more or less got to Alcor and Mizar, first time I have ever split Mizar, and just stayed there. Jeff and Don will have to say what they were going with because we hardly had a chance to talk to each other once the people started coming. Once you picked out an object, you almost had to stay with it as there was little or no time to look for anything else. I did manage the Coathanger with the binoculars just before we shutdown. Brief editorial note: I think it's important to have those binoculars set up at each of these introductory star parties. Have a couple of really special binocular objects ready to show them. The array of expensive telescopes can be very intimidating to the uninitiated. I don't think they believed me that John's Dob was the least expensive scope out there and it's capabilities are pretty much outstanding. But, to have them realize that a lot of astronomy can be done with binoculars, even inexpensive binoculars, while they learn why they don't want a "6000X Galaxy Killer" from Wal-Mart and a whole lot of real telescope can be had for only a few dollars more, sometimes no more, that is a real learning experience for them!

A few comments from Jeff: Don was on M57 and I was on Andromeda Galaxy. We would show the folks the photo image and then the drawing of the image in the Stephen James O'Meara book before they looked through the eyepiece. I also pointed out the object on their starcharts. I really liked the flow of this presentation. Don and I actually believe it is best to have two people per scope. One presenting the object through pictures/sketches (and shooting out nearby lights with laser pointers) and the other person presenting the object in the eyepiece.