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CNYO Observing Log: Liverpool Public Library, 6 March 2014

Posted on March 29, 2014 7:13 pm - - Leave a Comment

From the Liverpool Public Library Calendar of Events:

Step outdoors with the CNY Observers (www.cnyo.org) and learn about the late Winter/Spring constellations, their origins, and how to navigate the Night Sky using the six constellations that are visible year-round.

Centuries before automated GoTo telescopes or phone apps were invented, constellations served as the amateur astronomer’s map of the heavens. Many telescope observers and binocular sky hunters still prefer the “age olde” method of learning the positions of nebulae, clusters, and galaxies based on the bright stars these objects reside near – all of which become much more easy to find once you associate these bright stars with their mythological characters.

This program is part of the Liverpool Public Library’s Unplugged Month.

CNYO members returned to the lecture circuit in 2014 with a stop at the Liverpool Public Library. Cindy Duryea and the rest of the LPL staff have been the most supportive of CNY astronomy events among the many local public libraries, having now hosted a half-dozen lectures in the last three years (for which the CNY amateur astronomy community is most grateful!). Regular patrons may even know that the LPL has established a binocular loaner program to help new amateur astronomers learn the craft on-the-cheap, complete with 20×80 binoculars, heavy-duty canvas case, red flashlight, and a few instructional books on the topic. CNYO members in attendance for this event included Ryan and Heather Goodson (and one New Moon Telescope Dob used to demo the scope workings indoors), Larry Slosberg (with another NMT Dob), Bob Piekiel (with a Meade C11), and myself (with an armillary sphere and copies of our brochures).

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The author working through A Guide For New Observers.

As I’ve mentioned on a few occasions, the local libraries are excellent places to host your open-to-the-public lectures, as the library provides the seating, presentation equipment (complete with LCD projector and large drop-down screen at LPL), and either free heat or cooling (made all the more important by Syracuse’s temperature swing throughout the year).

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Ryan Goodson describing the workings of an NMT Dob.

In keeping with the Unplugged Month theme, the indoor part of the lecture used no more technology than a flashlight to act as the Sun (no one brought candles). The lecture itself consisted mostly of walking through the first two of our brochures, Guide For New Observers and How The Night Sky Moves. The Guide For New Observers served several purposes:

1. Discussing Dark Adaption and the importance of not answering your smart phone.

2. Using your fully-extended arm and hand as a distance measure for the constellations.

3. Using Light Pollution to your advantage by starting to find bright constellations in the city.

4. Tricks to finding some of the most common (and easily found) constellations.

How The Night Sky Moves goes into a bit more detail about why the constellations appear as they do, including the yearly changes in the Night Sky that come with our oriented rotation axis towards Polaris and the yearly changes that come with our 23 hour, 56 minute, and 4 second daily rotation.

I will warn those who have not tried to give an astro lecture without proper preparation that it is not as easy at you might think! Amateur astronomy is a very visual hobby. Take away your standard Hubble images of celestial panoramas and various historical content in a Powerpoint slide, and you find yourself working extra-hard to turn hand waving into physics. That said, it is an excellent exercise to test how well you know and can explain physical phenomena, so worth trying (at least once) as you plan your future lectures.

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The outdoor group and scopes.

With the indoor lecture complete, attendees willing to brave the cold (and a few who just happened to be walking by) were treated to attending telescopes in the park across the street (not ideal for dedicated observing, but you can absolutely get some great sights from well-lit city centers provided you pick your observing targets accordingly. No galaxies!) and a sneak-preview of the Regulus occultation by asteroid Erigone (which, ultimately, wasn’t observable from CNY).

CNYO members are always happy to bring our scopes and know-how to libraries, school events, and any other groups that might be interested. For more information, please contact us through our Contact Page.

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CNYO Observing Log: Camp Comstock, Ithaca, 1 June 2013

Posted on June 18, 2013 10:22 pm - - Leave a Comment

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One of the great joys of public observing sessions is introducing non-observers to the immensity of our local sliver of the universe. Hubble imagery and the amazing ground-based astrophotography of the last 25-or-so years is all well and good, but to explain to a new observer that the photons from the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) currently hitting their retina have been on a 23 million year voyage, or to put all of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) into the field of view and explain that the photons on one side of the eyepiece have been traveling 150,000 years longer than the photons on the “other” side of the eyepiece, or to aim a Coronado PST at the Sun and point out that the sunspots on the surface are 3 or more Earths across – these are the images that really put the universe, and our place in it, into perspective.

One of the great joys of lecturing on introductory astronomy is being able to describe all of these visuals in greater detail, showing how observation and the rest of the Scientific Method have produced great order in our Nighttime Sky (for, at least, the parts of the sky we can see in the backyard on a clear, dark night). As is true for many of the other physical sciences, a book chapter or wikipedia page alone can be far less informative, and is definitely far less engaging, than a chance to have a conversation with someone who knows the topic well enough to relate complicated concepts by drawing from many additional resources.

And, at a time when we continually fret the state of STEM education in the US, there is nothing better for an academically-inclined scientist (me) than to have someone many years their (my) junior process the information on a slide and ask a question that (1) clearly shows a grasp of the physics involved and (2) they (I) don’t have a good answer to. Lecturing keeps the lecturer just as sharp!

It is with those points in mind that CNYO hosted a Girl Scout lecture on Saturday, June 1 at Camp Comstock in Ithaca, NY as part of their requirements for earning their Night Sky badge. Unfortunately, the mostly cloudy and otherwise unpredictable night before made the Nighttime Sky observing component impossible, compacting the badge requirement section into a combined lecture/solar observing session that went well over allotted time with no (voiced) complaints.

Instead of highlighting lecture points, my goal here is to provide a few pointers for perspective astro-lecturers of kids and young adults (although I suspect the same applies for all generations).

1. Plenty Of Lead Time For Setup

In my case, my leisurely 1 hour drive turned into a compressed 40 minute drive as I waited for a police officer to take my eyewitness statements after a fender-bender on Route 13. Lesson #1 – Don’t text while driving!

2. Short Sections

Based on the Night Sky badge requirements, I had a very good template by which to design seven short lectures that would fit nicely into a 60 minute presentation (that, with questions, then went on for two hours). A full hour on a single topic to a general audience can be way too much for even a focused audience. Make this an audience of young adults and add an un-air conditioned, 85 oF room to the mix just after lunch, and you’ve got a recipe for a very… red-shifted lecture. A very good approach for you and the audience is to pick several topics and try to make a complete mini-lecture out of each. This makes your preparation time more productive (because you can divide-and-conquer as well) and it allows you to give the audience a minute between mini-lectures to digest and freshen up for the next one. In the Night Sky badge case, my seven sections were:

A. The Local Neighborhood

– A “powers of 10” walkabout from Earth out to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

B. Circumpolar Constellations

– Explaining how the Earth moves (rotation vs. revolution) and why the North Star doesn’t appear to. This part of the lecture was complemented by the CNYO How The Night Sky Moves brochure.

C. Constellations (What & Why) And Stars

– An overview of Western constellations and the stars that define them, including a little discussion of stellar variety (color, age, size)

D. Why Learn The Constellations?

– Stress the historical meaning of the Constellations, then their use for direction (Follow The Drinkin’ Gourd) and use for marking deep sky objects (specifically, the Messiers)

E. Don’t Panic!

– How to learn the constellations, including the circumpolar-first approach, seasonal heavy-hitters, and the Zodiac

F. Solar System Formation

– Two videos I always keep handy in the back of a presentation are “Birth Of Our Solar System” (a nice animation of the formation of the whole Solar System)…

… and “How The Moon Was Born” (a video that shows the history of the Earth-Moon system and the ever-impressive Theia impact).

G. Light and Air Pollution

– Light pollution is bad, but it does help new astronomers find the bright starts in constellations. Air pollution also helps, but at a much higher cost. We should be avoiding both!

3. Ask Lots Of Questions

The biggest lesson I learned from watching professionals present to kids is to ask those kids lots of questions and let them be A driver in the presentation (but not THE driver, as you may never get the wheel back). It keeps the audience engaged, it lets others try to explain a concept in a way that the other-others may benefit from, it breaks up the monotony of the single-presenter approach, and it gives kids a chance to “show off” their scientific knowledge (which some of them love to do).

The best kinds of questions are (1) the very easy ones (how many planets) and (2) the ones that no one there (likely) has the answer to but that all can think about and take a swing at (alien life, what happens at a black hole, how big is the Sun, etc.).

If you’re lecturing to a group of 10 year olds, find a friend with a 10-year-old and see what they (don’t) know. If the kid isn’t astronomically-inclined, assume that their knowledge is similar to that of other 10 year olds in a Regents-guided state. The Girl Scout lecture was to a room of 13 to 17 year olds, and I am pleased to report that I had to move on to the “heavy questions” quite early in the lecture.

4. Preparing For The Power-Less Lecture

The Girl Scout lecture could have been done outdoors with demos or indoors with slides. Being a very visual science, astronomy lends itself better to slides unless you’ve several really good demos planned out beforehand (or brochures to help guide the discussion). There are several demos one can use to help get away from the slide-driven lecture and I hope to eventually get to the point of not needing any power. Simple demos (that will be expanded on in future articles) include:

A. Flashlights to demonstrate optical vs. true binaries (differently-colored flashlights are great for multi-star systems)

B. A tape measure and rubber balls to demonstrate the distances within the Solar System (if you’ve a 15 meter tape measure, you can place the planets at: 14.8 cm (Mercury), 27.3 cm (Venus), 38.0 cm (Earth), 57.0 cm (Mars), 197.7 cm (Jupiter), 360.8 cm (Saturn), 729.1 cm (Uranus), 1143.0 cm (Neptune), and 1500 cm (Pluto)

C. An armillary sphere (or big labeled ball) to demonstrate Earth’s axial tilt and its motion around the Sun (with a laser pointer serving as “Polaris,” a walk around an audience member serving as the Sun works perfectly well to help explain the circumpolar constellations

5. Anticipating The Unexpected Question(s)

When I think about the Sun, the first two questions that come to mind are not (1) Isn’t there a disease where you can’t be in the Sun because your skin breaks apart? and (2) I heard that some people try to live on only sunlight with no food. Isn’t that crazy (answer: yes)?

6. The Daytime Is The Right Time

As CNYO’s Larry Slosberg has determined for his observing sessions, the afternoon sky is a perfectly good substitute for the nighttime sky provided you (1) have a solar filter and (2) plan around the first quarter Moon. In the case of (1), the Sun is an excellent observing target for new observers because they very likely have never looked at it through filters and, as you can stress in your discussion, it is the reason why we’re here.

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The Sun on 1 June, 2013. From SOHO/NASA.

As for (2), it is also a reason why we’re here, but the magnified Moon, either against a black or blue afternoon backdrop, never fails to impress. To help lead discussion at subsequent daytime observing sessions, the solar-centric Girl Scout session instigated the CNYO solar observing brochure available for download at: A Guide For Solar Observing.

And A Closing Thought…

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CNYO Observing Log: Beaver Lake Nature Center, 2 May 2013

Posted on May 12, 2013 2:18 pm - - 1 Comment

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Greetings fellow astrophiles,

May 2nd served as the rain date (due to rapidly-overcasting conditions on April 25th) for our first Beaver Lake Nature Center lecture of the year – The Guiding & Wandering Stars – Key Northern Constellations & Planet Observations. On hand to run scopes and engage in lecture duties were the author with a 12.5″ New Moon Telescope Dobsonian, Larry Slosberg with one Meade SCT and Bob Piekiel with another.

The Constellations have been with us for thousands of years, but there are only a few good, clear nights each month to memorize their positions as they slowly move across the sky! This outdoor lecture by the CNY Observers (www.cnyo.org) will briefly describe the history and importance of the Constellations as mythological, agricultural, and navigational guides, then will describe a simple system to begin to learn their relative positions. At the same time, Jupiter and Saturn are on opposite sides of the Southern sky, making excellent targets for binocular and telescope observing. Free and open to the public.

While the week including May 2nd will be known to some as a particularly bad week for maple tree allergies, the nighttime sky stayed quite clear and the bugs eventually froze around us to produce an excellent session. The attending crowd of about 35 served as test subjects for both our two new brochures (How The Night Sky Moves and Guide For New Observers) and our first official completely outdoors (Powerpoint-free) lecture (which, despite astronomy being such a visual hobby, worked will with just the brochure contents). In anticipation of some nighttime brochure reading, I put together some red light flashlights on the cheap locally. For anyone attempting similar, I found a four-pack of Dorcy AAA 6 LED Flashlights at Dicks Sporting Goods for $10. Some very minor surgery is needed to remove the top caps, but conversion to red light flashlights is straightforward with the help of a four-layer stack of red acetate purchased many moons ago from Commercial Art Supply in Syracuse.

406px-EB1711_Armillary_SphereDespite a little confusion about the start time (7:30 or 8:00), everyone had pulled in by 7:45 p.m., so we began the session with a good 30 minutes of physics. The goal of these Beaver Lake lectures is to not only observe objects, but to explain why the sky moves as it does so those trying to learn new constellations will understand what to expect both over the course of a night and over the course of a year. This began at the ground floor – understanding how the Earth moves around the Sun. With the help of an armillary sphere (which holds the Earth at its 23 degree tilt – see the image at left from wikipedia), the Earth’s movement around the Sun was demonstrated, specifically showing that the rotation axis stays pointed the same way as we revolve – thus resulting in Polaris appearing not to move over the course of the year despite the Earth shifting position by 300 million kilometers (2 astronomical units) every 6 months. Knowing that Polaris is always in the same place in the sky (whether it’s daytime or not) leads smoothly into a discussion of the circumpolar constellations and the benefit of learning these six constellations first (for this discussion and some how-to’s, I refer you to the CNYO brochure: Guide For New Observers).

Running a sunset-to-late-night session with a non-cycling crowd has (at least) two distinct advantages. First, the importance of dark adaption and the need to avoid smart phones (or avoid their use around others) can be stressed early in the evening. While enforcing protocols to maintain dark adaption at any kind of public lecture is usually a losing battle, anyone answering a phone did it in a very non-obvious manner, which was most welcome. Second, the mechanics of my Dobsonian telescope and Larry and Bob’s two motorized SCTs could be presented while still visible to attendees. More importantly, the proper observing technique for all could be demonstrated by showing (a) how to approach an eyepiece (I tell people to put their hands behind their back and simply lean into the eyepiece) and (b) just how easy it is to nudge a scope away from its target. Specifically for the Dob, I’m sure anyone who’s brought their scope to a public session has had at least one person lean on or pull closer an eyepiece. I’m pleased to report that, once the observing started, our collective intro to scope workings made my Dob-running life simple with no unplanned re-adjustments (just adjustments of the unmotorized kind).

As stated in a previous post (2013 March 8 – At The Syracuse Inner Harbor), new observers are best introduced to observing with easy objects that don’t require training. Deep, dim, distant galaxies are not useful starters for someone with no background in eyepiece observing. For my part, a good 70 minutes were spent on Jupiter (low in the Western Sky with all four Galilean moons present), Saturn (low in the Eastern Sky and my first view of it this year), Arcturus in Boötes (its shimmering in the sky both with and without magnification was a point of discussion for several near my scope), M13 (the globular cluster in Hercules, which served as a first “way out” object and an example of using the constellations as a “coarse adjustment” for finding Messier and other objects), and the pair Alcor and Mizar in the handle of the Big Dipper/tail of Ursa Major (to show the separation and additional detail that comes with magnification).

With a much smaller crowd around 9:30 p.m., I did treat a few interested parties to some more difficult observing in my scope – The Leo Triplet – after first briefly explaining the mechanics of averted vision. Of the five people who looked, all could make out M65, all could at least tell that something “was there” where M66 rested, and three people could tell that “something else” was there at NGC 3628‘s position. And I did miss a golden opportunity to observe NGC 4565 (my personal favorite) in Coma Berenices.

We closed up shop at 10 p.m., just as Cygnus and Lyra began to peak out over the horizon and announce the approaching return of our Summer Constellations. I am pleased to report that we will be hosting a Summer Session on Thursday, August 8th (with an August 15th rain date) where we will again do a little bit of mechanics and instruction outdoors, followed by Saturn, Venus, and all that our summer view of the Milky Way can provide.

August 8 – Stargazing with CNY Observers & Observing

CNY Observers (CNYO) hosts an introductory lecture to the Night Sky, focusing on planets and other objects observable during August and September.  Part of the lecture will discuss some simple ways to learn the Constellations, while the rest of the lecture will provide details about meteor showers, observing satellites and the ISS, and the ever-expanding description of our own Solar System.  If time and weather permits, some early evening views of Venus and Saturn will be had from the Beaver Lake parking lot.  Free for members; $2 for nonmembers.

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