by Stacy Jo McDermott
While this is not quite an extensive observing report, it is something that I wanted to share with you all.
For the Christmas holidays, I made the trek back to Colorado to do my duty as a loving daughter and sister to visit family and provide an island of sanity to my beloved sibling. She has two girls, 10 and 6.
My gift to my beautiful and intelligent nieces was the Orion 4.5 inch Dobsonian telescope. We decided that I should present it to them prior to Christmas as I was leaving on 12/26.
The package which contained the telescope had been sitting in the living room for about two weeks during which time neither niece bothered to inspect it as it had my name on the address label. Much to their delight, last Thursday night, I told them that the boxes were indeed for them.
So we got down to business and assembled the telescope together. Took about an hour because Auntie here couldn't find their father's tools off-hand. However, once the tools were located we proceeded to assemble.
First light was that night (12/20) with the Moon being the first object. 10 year old Alex took the light-bucket like a fish to water. Her younger sister Sam, 6, thought it was too much fun but has a shorter attention span when it comes to aligning the mirrors and the spotting scope (not to mention, she like me, thought it was way too cold at 25 degrees to be out.) However, Alex and I stayed out until auntie's face had no feeling left. That night and the ensuing nights afterward, we gazed upon the Moon with it's crators, Jupiter, Saturn, Orion's Nebula, Rigel and the 7 sisters. We had sessions every night through Sunday.
The one thing that warmed the cockles of my stargazing heart is when Alex asked me to help her design her very own observing log! It was totally her idea that she should note down what she sees with the telescope. She was very thorough in what information she thought she would need and we designed the log sheets on the computer. The next day we went to Kinko's to make copies. She also decided that she should have a dedicated binder for her observing logs. Alex plans to show her teacher at school what she is doing with the telescope and maybe even bring it in for show-and-tell. She is an observer at heart and I couldn't be more pleased. She may be joining me out here next summer to go on a TAC observing trip.
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I certainly did but am glad to be back in the Bay Area where the climate is more suited to my liking.