by Gene Allen, Outreach Chair

David Letcher, our former, longtime Outreach Chair, served as Event Lead for an Outreach Event in Hopewell on March 22. His report on the Event is as follows:

“Well, we continued our tradition of giving a star party at Hopewell Elementary School tonight, a tradition that began through the efforts of our late member Gene Ramsey.

Victor Davis and I went to the school tonight with 100% overcast skies with occasional rain and very windy conditions BUT Victor Davis saved the night!

Victor (with my humble assistance) brought his 3 inch Questar and assorted equipment from his car into the school auditorium and, under Victor’s direction, we set up a neat alternative to observing the real night sky. To wit, Victor, who had purchased a bunch of 35 mm slides of astronomical objects from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, set up an arrangement in which children could look through his eyepiece and see a slide’s object, such as a star cluster, just as if they were outside!

We were also happy to attend a one-hour demonstration of gas laws by a scientist who owns a business of doing science lectures/demos to school groups. That was good fun!

It was a good time had by all!”

We have a number of Outreach Events coming up, from a Scout Troop at the opening night at Simpson Observatory to Communiversity Day April 28 to more than a half dozen library presentations over the summer. We are working on developing a somewhat “canned” presentation that can be adapted to daytime or evening events for a wide age range. My wish is to come up with something that can be offered by any of our Outreach volunteers with little additional preparation. If any of our membership has any material or assistance to offer toward this effort, please get in touch with me.