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I was one of the paying guests at Lick Friday, September 10, 1999. This was my first visit to the observatory at night. I had visited once before during the day (after finishing the W. Sheehan biography of E.E. Barnard last fall, see November 98 TAC archives "Lick and EE Barnard"). I really enjoyed the Friday concert, lecture, and the chance to look through the same giant refractor that Barnard had used for his famous visual discovery of a fifth moon of Jupiter back in September of 1892.
When I came out of the observatory a little after 10pm there were lines of 5 or 10 people at the 2 amateur scopes set up outside, (Jay's AP refractor and Kurt Kuhlmann's 16 inch Dob). Since I had my own 7 inch Starmaster Dob in the car, I decided to set up to help with the remaining crowd. My car was parked down the road a bit, but the scope is an easy carry, OTA in one hand, base in another, and a lightweight Coleman camping chair thrown over my shoulder.
On my way back from the car, I noticed that both Jupiter and Saturn were up, though obscured by trees from the vantage point of the two scopes that had been set up earlier. One of the advantages of a small dob is that it is easy to move anywhere. I plunked it down close to the dome of the great refractor, a spot with a clear view of the giant planet. I popped in a Vixen 24-8 mm zoom eyepiece and an Ultima 2x barlow and was pleased to see a fairly steady view of Jupiter at powers up to 240x. I was surprised at how good the seeing was in spite of the wind on Mt. Hamilton.
Five minutes after stepping out of the observatory myself, I was all set up and showing views to the other guests. Over the next hour and a half I had about 30 people look through the scope, ranging in age from about 6 to 75 years old.
A series of recent "astronomical beginnings" stories on TAC showed that it was an initial view of Saturn or Jupiter that got many people hooked on astronomy. These two objects also tend to surprise people with how much they can see, rather than how little. I therefore decided to stick with Jupiter and Saturn as the public objects of choice. This worked great, and I had a long series of "oh my God", and "Harry, you have GOT to see this", and "that must be a photograph", and "this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen" comments from the people who looked through the little 7 inch scope. It certainly helped that a shadow transit was clearly visible on Jupiter, followed by a visible transit of Io itself superimposed on the southern equatorial belt of Jupiter. The GRS and following region also showed lots of intricate detail and subtle color shades. And Saturn was drop-dead gorgeous later as only Saturn can be.
The lines fell to a trickle of staff and volunteers by midnight, and everyone had gone by 12:30 or 1 am. I stayed another hour or so by myself, working on some Herschel 400 objects and enjoying the night, site, and seeing. (The very steady skies on Mt. Hamilton were originally confirmed by famed double star observer Sherburne Burnham during a site test over a hundred years ago with a 6 inch refractor. He experienced 42 nights of "first class seeing" at the Lick site between August17th and October 16th, 1879, and discovered 42 new double stars during the 2 month period. The results were impressive enough that Burnham moved from Chicago to join the original Lick staff). I hope to come back to Lick again, get some more peeks through the 36 inch refractor, and help show off the heavens to the public again if Lick needs any more volunteers with amateur scopes.