Friday night I took the LX200 down to The Big Sur Land Trust Summer Camp for a show and tell. The camp is not actually in Big Sur, it is in the Mittledorf Preserve which is accessed through Rancho San Carlos, from Carmel Valley. This is private property behind a locked gate.

The site is wonderful. It is in a valley surrounded by low hills. No sign of light pollution in any direction, and good views in all directions. I was expecting the event to be fogged in. Carmel Valley has had only about a few clear nights in the last month. However, the fog didn't show up until the kids were heading off to bed at about 10:45.

There were about 10-15 kids of middle school age. After a discussion of the different kinds of objects in the sky, we first looked at Mars. It wasn't showing well, but they seemed excited just to see it. Next we looked at M13 which was something new to them. They had never heard of star clusters. Someone noticed Jupiter rising (after a few UFO sightings with flashing red lights). I suggested that it would not be very good viewing until it got higher, but to avoid a riot, we took a look. A bright fuss-ball with moons was the best description, but they seemed excited just to be able to see the moons. Later we took another look, and the bands were easily seen. In brief moments some detail could be seen in the bands. They were quite excited.

We looked at M8 with a discussion of stars forming from hydrogen gass. We talked about what happens when a certain size star runs out of hydrogen to burn, implodes and blows off some of the outer material. Then we looked at M57. Someone asked about red giants, so we looked at Antares.

After looking at a few constellations, locating the north star, and talking about the Milky Way being made up of stars (not fog), we looked at M102. When they understood that this was the same sort of thing as the Milky Way, but 40 million light years away, we got into a discussion about what a light year was. Once the idea of the light year was understood (as being a very long way to walk:-) We talked about millions. Somewhere I read that a million grains of sugar would fill a small house. So, 40 houses full of sugar times light years...You could hear the jaws dropping. I think they started to get an idea of how big the universe is.

A good time was had by all. The kids were quite enthusiastic. I stayed a little after they left, but the fog soon started to come in. So I left about 11:00 pm.