Astronomy Day at Jack London Square in Oakland

by Jane Houston Jones


Most of the EAS club members were helping out at Chabot Space and Science Center or at the Oakland Zoo for Astronomy Day so we went to Jack London Square, where there has usually been a group with telescopes on Astronomy Day.

From about 2:00 p.m. to about 6:30 p.m. we aimed two telescopes, one homemade 6 inch f/10 solar telescope and one Orion Short tube 80 with solar filter at the sun and showed nice sunspots in quite windy and cold conditions. About 4:30 p.m. I set up a 12.5 inch f/5.75 Litebox and aimed at the moon, and Mojo set up his 14.5 inch f/4.8 Litebox a little later, when the sun went down.

As the sun went down, the marine layer came in and high stratus too. So by 7:30 p.m. we were freezing, aiming through sucker holes, so we packed it up, and came home to thaw.

As we crossed the Richmond/ San Rafael Bridge, we think we saw Mercury, finally. We've been out with our telescopes alot lately, but nowhere with a decent western horizon.

We had good crowds and at least got to show the spotty sun and pretty first quarter moon. We also passed out charts showing where, and explaining why, the 5 planets were visible in the evening sky. Last night was way better with similiar crowd numbers, observing in front of the Rafael Film Center in downtown San Rafael, except we got to show people Ptolemaeus, Jupiter and Saturn.