By David Skitt

The Solar Observing Memorial Day Weekend event on Saturday, May 27^th, held at AAAP’s Observatory in Washington Crossing State Park was awesome! We had 10 volunteers/keyholders.  Not sure of the breakdown of members in attendance versus general public but we had at least 60 +/- people wander through.  Some said they follow us on SM or our website and that’s how they heard about it.  Some came because we talked about it Friday night.  There was a park musket firing demo at 2 pm which probably added some passers-by.  I gave some flyers to the visitors center around 12:20; there was no one manning the main entrance kiosk or I would have given them some.  I’ve been told the park entrance fees have been waived until the state budget is finalized.  One of the park park volunteers at the VC came by for a look.

We had two, dual setups with whitelight/hydrogen alpha filtered scopes, one single HA scope, three single whitelight scopes and one binocular/whitelight setup.  Inside the obs’y we had two whitelight visual scopes and were using the two cameras with whitelight filters. Plenty of options for the viewers.

I took some pictures as did Jen, Larry Kane and John Miller. 

Jen, John M. John H. and Larry manned the literature table under a canopy I brought.  The donation can attracted $109.  On Friday night, a friend of one (maybe several) of our members donated a used Celestron 114mm GT newtonian scope (yes, one of the bird-jones designs).  It needs some collimation but seems to track OK.   Tom and I will have a go at it sometime.

All in all it was fun and informative weekend at the Observatory.