July 17, 2009: Tech Trek at Stanford

Vivian White

This was a great event and a nice night for it. If I tell you it was 85 middle school girls, it's probably nothing like what you are thinking. These young ladies were picked by their science teachers as having great potential and are attending a science summer camp at Stanford. I'm hard pressed to think of a better public starparty I've been to. Thanks to Jim McClure who organized this and got some great astronomers out on the field.

I took out a donated Meade 125 for the first time that I heard was having tracking problems. Got some great advice from my kind neighbor Ron. Among other changes, I'm going to switch the the 8x finder to a 1x which will make aligning much easier. Time to make a trip down to Bay Street before heading up to Yosemite next weekend. It did have some wiggle in the vertical direction so I think I'll brave opening those forks this weekend and see if it's anything obvious, as a first fix. Though the go-to said I could see Omega Cen, so I'm guessing that's not the main issue... Will try the not-so-easy align next time. Oh well, star-hopping is fun too.

The girls were full of insightful questions and enjoyed looking at lots of objects besides Saturn! The night was neatly framed by Saturn for an opener and Jupiter was a perfect finish. We looked at lots of the usual bright clusters. M3, M22, M6- they saw the butterfly right away, and some double stars. Ron got the lagoon nebula looking great through his 10" with his fancy new eyepiece (can't remember the details of either). Everyone cheered when the stadium light next door went off around 10pm and we got down to some darker sky objects. Bob Black told me he let a couple of the die-hard campers align his scope. They were hanging out with us, asking questions, and observing until after 11. So much fun!

~Vivian