by Jane Houston Jones
I attended the Sonoma County Astronomical Society Young Astronomers meeting tonight, in Kenwood, California. Tonight we started with some preparations for the Striking Sparks Day, coming up later this month.
This is the day when the 10 new club-made telescopes are awarded to the 10 students who won the essay contest with their persuasive replies to the question "Why I want a telescope".
The current Young Astronomers always present a skit or activity at the awards ceremony, and this year they will present "Planets on a Rope". A nylon rope was knotted indicating the distance of each planet from the sun. Holding a 1/4 inch light, which represented our sun, the teenage YA President unrolled the solar system, and one youngster after another took hold of his or her planet and walked away from the sun. From Pluto to Neptne to Uranus, and on in to Mercury, a Young Astronomer stood and held the rope knotted at their planet, and walked away from the sun. Of course the rope was so long that Pluto, Neptune and Uranus were out the back door of the Kenwood School aduitorium.
After that, the Young Astronomers cleared the room of chairs, and set up a table where tiny Starshine 4 satellite mirrors were being ground and polished. Just like with a telescope mirror, small tools the size of a nickel were pushed against the mirror blanks with fine abrasives. The Young Astronomers have been selected to participate in Starshine 4, and their own mirrors will reflect light back to earth when the satellite is launched in 2003.
After that three Striking Sparks telescopes were set up inside, and the kids aimed telrads at various stars on the screen (Betelgeuse in Orion, etc), and then we took the telescopes outside for some real action.
We conducted a sky tour by bright flashligh, showing constellations in the sky tonight. Then the kids aimed their own telescopes at various objects. First were Saturn and Jupiter, of course. Cor Caroli, the lovely double star in Canes Venatici, was just one other object the kids pointed to from the observing target list for March which each received.
One Young Astronomer rigged a camera to the eyepiece of his telescope and took some pictures of Jupiter. He's done the same with the moon.
He put masking tape on the side bearings to reduce the friction, and keep his 'scope balanced. Well, maybe that's better than a one pound lead weight. It is certainly a low tech solution!
Pretty soon is was nearly 10:00 p.m. and the moon was rising. There were still some Young Astronomers out with their telescopes, mostly showing their parents some interesting objects, all the while they were telling them "don't touch the telescope". Clusters of friends chatted and giggled in the dark, just like us big kids do at our own star parties. The transparancy, which was cruddy earlier, improved and the planets snapped into crispness in the 5.5 inch f/7 Sparks Telescopes.
The teenage YA president and I collimated his scope, and realigned the Telrad. He received his Striking Sparks telescope when he was in the first grade, and now he is a junior in high school, and has been president of the Young Astronomers for several years. He has had that little scope, which had an autograph from John Dobson on it, for longer than most of us have had our own telescopes. With that thought in mind, I took a last look at the moon through my four year old 6 inch reflector, then packed it up and headed home.
That was one of the nicest observing sessions I've had recently.