by Jane Houston Jones
You never know how the sky is going to turn out when you schedule events in the future. Lately, too many of my school-type events have been rained out. So all week I was despairing about tonight's Girl Scout campout event at the Bothin Youth Center Girl Scout Camp over-the-hill past Fairfax, CA, nestled in the coastal hills of central California.
The afternoon sky was cloudy but the satellite forecast showed a band of
high clouds passing overhead with clear skies behind it. We estimated the clear skies would coincide with our event, so we packed the car with a f/7.3 10 inch homemade reflector with a 6 foot cardboard tube, a shorter tubed f/5 6 inch reflector and a compact f/5.75 12.5 inch truss-tube reflector and headed confidently down Sir Francis Drake Boulevard for Fairfax at dusk.
When we arrived, it was totally clear overhead. We set up our three telescopes, one each for the two of us, and a "spare" for a kid with interest in pushing a dob around. It didn't take long for a volunteer to surface, and so I was relegated to the 6 inch dob, when a student took over the ladder and tall 10-inch reflector and kept it aimed at Saturn for the duration of our stargazing event.
Girl Ccout outings involve many activities occupying every minute of the day and night, so when it was dark, like clockwork, 50 girls came from the dining hall to the telescopes. Our three telescopes were aimed at Jupiter, Saturn and Mars mostly, and Kerry, our amateur astronomer friend with the Girl Scout connection, had a 4-inch Orion refractor with a 50mm eyepiece aimed at Alcor/Mizar and then the Pleiades. For 45 minutes or so we had lines of 10 girls, with scout leaders and other large people, behind all four telescopes. I was showing Mars and was pretty amazed at how many of the girls said "wow" and said "that's my favorite planet" or "it is really red, sort of" when viewing the insignificant low power low sky view of Mars through a 6 inch reflector at 63 and 125 power with Orion 6mm and 12mm Lanthanum eyepieces. Our bigger scopes showed Saturn at 103 power (10 incher) and Jupiter at 125 power (12.5 incher), again using Orion Lanthanum 14mm and 18mm eyepieces. I like these eyepieces because of their great eye relief for the public.
Well, soon it was time for the girls to go to their next thing, which was dessert and Indian lore and bed. Our hostess came out and looked through the eyepieces and got to watch her child aim the long 10 inch reflector at Saturn for her. And then we got our payment for an evening, as if the wows weren't enough payment already. We each received a can of Girl Scouts Hot Cajun Crunch Mix and a can of Girl Scout Peanut Squares. I don't know if the Girl Scouts sell these, but they should. ANd they should set up a booth at every star party - what perfect star snackin' party food!
What kind of night was it? Well, it wasn't a night to write about in terms of seeing, transparancy or gross numbers of objects observed. It wasn't a numbers kind of night. But it was a night to set up telescopes next to two penned goats, with wild turkeys in the nearby field and with high trees surrounding the observing area. It was a perfect kind of night to show 50 Girl Scouts and their leaders the planets, the important dance of planets on the ecliptic plane, and our special springtime sky.