by Dan Wright
Was that you at the other end of the playground, Phil T? I should have wandered over and said hi!
While driving to the school, I looked at the cloudy sky and thought, I’m stupid for even trying; we’re gonna get skunked. But somebody’s sacrifices to the weather gods must have been accepted favorably, because (though misty) the seeing became good enough to impress the general public.
Long lines of people waited to see Saturn or Jupiter in Old Smokey or my LX200.
To keep them entertained while waiting, I placed my Canon IS 15x50 binoculars on a tripod and pointed them at the moon. Afraid a kid would knock over those expensive binocs, I hung a 30 lb bag of sand from the spreader between the tripod’s legs. With that much weight holding it down, the tripod felt trustworthy.
The views of Jupiter and Saturn got great reviews, but what really captured the people’s attention was the green laser. There’s something about those things that makes people go “Oh, WOW!” Everybody gathers around and wants to know about it. I let this one little girl handle the laser, and she pointed all around the sky asking, “What’s that? And what’s that?” I could name them all (the seeing was so limited I knew the names of nearly all visible objects).
Later when I was packing up, this dude strolled over from his yard looking and speaking like a laid-back surfer/stoner type. In fact his eyelids seemed to be at half-mast right then. I sat him in a chair and told him to look at the Pleiades through my binoculars. He started saying, “Oh wow man! I never saw anything like that! How many stars are there? Oh wow, look at the MOON, man! Just LOOK at that thing! I NEVER saw the moon like that! Wow man!” Guess that made his night. Nothing like getting high on nature, huh?