Cloudy skies and rain greeted 50 visitors to Western University’s Cronyn Observatory Summer Public Night, Saturday, August 25th, 2018, 8:30 p.m. Graduate student Collin Knight gave 2 presentations of his digital slide presentation “Cryovolcanism on Enceladus” and fielded questions. There were 43 visitors in the lecture room for the first presentation and 8 for the second presentation. RASC London Centre member Lynn Jones was “crowd manager,” listened to the first slide presentation, and counted 50 visitors for the evening.
RASC London Centre was represented by Bob Duff, Heather MacIsaac, Henry Leparskas, Peter Jedicke, Dale Armstrong, Lynn Jones, Mark Tovey and Everett Clark, who arrived later around 10:26 p.m. Graduate student Keegan Marr was telescope operator in the dome which remained closed because of the rain.
Dale Armstrong and Heather MacIsaac set up the observatory’s Meade 8-inch (20.3cm) Schmidt-Cassegrain so as to view out the dome door to the observation deck. Dale directed the 20.3cm Schmidt-Cassegrain towards the TV screen visible in the Western Sports & Recreation Center windows, removed the diagonal and installed the 26mm Plossl eyepiece (77X). When the visitors from the first slide presentation arrived upstairs in the dome, Dale gave a talk about the history of telescopes and the Cronyn Observatory as well as the technical aspects of the big 25.4cm refractor. He explained how the Schmidt camera and the Cassegrain reflector telescope worked—both piggy-backed on the 25.4cm refractor—as well as the Standard and Sidereal Time clocks on the east wall. He explained how Sidereal Time was used to locate objects in the sky using the right ascension and declination circles on the equatorial telescope mount. Dale gave a second shorter telescope talk to several more visitors, later in the evening.
Downstairs in the “Black Room” Henry Leparskas did the 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 also showed visitors a replica of the Dresden Meteorite, made by 3D printer, displayed on a table in the “Black Room.”
Mark Tovey 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 listened to the first slide presentation and later visited the dome. Heather invited visitors to “walk on the Moon and Mars” by stepping on the observatory’s 2 round wood and clear plastic display cases containing tiny “Moon Rock” and “Mars Rock” meteorite samples.
There were 11 “Star Finder” planispheres distributed in the dome, including 9 given out to interested visitors by Heather and 2 more given out by Henry to a couple of girls when he came upstairs into the dome towards the end of the evening. The visitors were gone the observatory was closed down around 11:00 p.m. after an enjoyable evening of slide presentation, demonstrations in the “Black Room,” tours of the historic “Period Rooms” and a tour of the big 25.4cm refractor in the dome.