Partly cloudy skies greeted some 192 visitors to Western University’s Cronyn Observatory Summer Public Night, Saturday, August 11th, 2018, 8:30 p.m. Professor Martin Houde made 2 presentations of his digital slide presentation “Submillimetre Astronomy,” first at 8:30 p.m. and the second time at 9:45 p.m. Undergraduate summer research student from Simon Fraser University, Dave Miller, was “crowd manager” and together with RASC London Centre member Bob Duff, counted visitors. Bob counted 65 visitors in the lecture room at 8:43 p.m., during the first slide presentation, and 36 visitors at 9:54 p.m., during the second slide presentation. Many visitors simply went upstairs into the dome or downstairs for demonstrations in the “Black Room” and tours of the historic “Period Rooms.” In all, there were 192 visitors counted for the evening.
Graduate student Collin Knight was telescope operator in the dome and showed visitors Jupiter and Mars through the big 25.4cm refractor (Meade 28mm Super Wide Angle eyepiece, 157X). When the sky clouded out he directed the 25.4cm refractor to show people the lights on the communications tower in south London. RASC London Centre was represented by Henry Leparskas, Steve Imrie, Everett Clark, Bob Duff, Paul Kerans, Peter Jedicke, Heather MacIsaac and Mark Tovey.
On the observation deck, Steve Imrie operated the London Centre’s home-built 30.5cm Dobsonian (17mm Nagler eyepiece, 88X) and began by showing a few people the wind turbine on the Engineering building, later directing the telescope towards Mars. Paul Kerans set up his Celestron 9.25-inch (23.5cm) Schmidt-Cassegrain on a Vixen equatorial mount and showed visitors Jupiter and Mars (21mm Ethos eyepiece, 112X). Heather MacIsaac set up her Celestron NexStar 90SLT 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain, showing visitors Jupiter (22mm Vixen Lanthanum LVW eyepiece, 57X) and then Mars (13mm Vixen Lanthanum LVW eyepiece, 96X).
Downstairs in the “Black Room” Henry Leparskas did the “Transit Demonstration,” with the “Transit Demo” model, showing how the transit detection method worked for finding extra-solar planets, and the “Spectroscopy Demonstration,” with the visitors putting on diffraction grating glasses to view the spectra of 4 gas discharge lamps, including hydrogen, helium, neon and mercury.
Henry, later joined by Mark Tovey, also showed visitors the “1940s Period Room,” a recreation of Dr. H. R. Kingston’s 1940 office, with his brass refractor and the Sotellunium—a mechanical eclipse demonstration model built by W. G. Colgrove—on display; and the “1967 Period Room,” recreating the early control room of the Elginfield Observatory to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation—Canada 150. The “W. G. Colgrove Workshop Period Room” was also open for visitors’ inspection. The 3 “Period Rooms” were designed by RASC London Centre member Mark Tovey.
Peter Jedicke gave 2 telescope talks in the dome as people lined up to view through the big 25.4cm refractor. The sky completely clouded over later in the evening and the dome was closed by around 10:45 p.m. with Henry and Peter talking to a few visitors downstairs in the “1940s Period Room” until 11:15 p.m. It was an enjoyable evening of astronomy for everybody, despite the partly cloudy sky.