Solar SUNday Part 1

We had a beautiful day up on the roof of the Buffalo Museum of Science today for about 2-3 hours of solar observing. Cliff Stoll (Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll Lecture: http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/atmosphere/video/x4vhuy_clifford-stoll-on-tedcom_tech spent the afternoon up there with us answering all kinds of questions. One lucky young boy asked a question of Cliff and it was wonderful to watch the interaction! Cliff sat right down on the ground and answered his questions and more-Oh about 30 or more minutes later I think this young boy had all his questions answered and more. Cliff's interaction with this lad was not unlike his own experience as young boy when he showed up at the Buffalo Museum of Science, knocked on the door of Ernst Both and was enthusiastically welcomed and had his questions answered and encouraged to come back, which he did. That young boy today may not remember all the science he was taught during this encounter but he will surely remember the day on the roof of the museum when a really smart wonderfully quirky guy with mildly out of control hair spent time listening to a 11 or 12 year old and made him feel really smart and important. Hopefully we make this difference when we do our outreach. Young observer Maxim who is pictured above sitting at the 60mm Coronado won the "longest to sit at the scope award" He was at the scope at least 5 minutes enjoying the sun in H-alpha. I love when kids take their time when its their turn. He was awarded with a NASA 3D ruler, Solar CD, "Cosmic Collision" DVD and a 3D SOHO card
We had a nice bunch of BAA members show up to help Alan and I. Jeff Gardner had his Televue equipped with a 40mm H-alpha filter and Mark Morgis had his binos equipped with white light filters. Alan again had his Televue stowaway with his 90mm H-alpha filter as well as his silver lamay sun shield. I brought my Televue 101 with white light and 60mm Coronado. Unfortunately there were no sunspots but it was nice for our visitors to see the difference between the views with the different filters. Also helping answering questions and manning the scopes were Scott Smith, Ted Bistany, Carl Milazzo, Anu and his friend Aimee, Pete Proulx, Don Knecht. We also had fun handing out stickers saying "I Saw the SUn in H-Alpha- 656.28 nanometers") as well as some Solar NASA material.
The movie Solarmax played in the Astro-theatre.
We had about 100+ visitors up to catch some sun as well as to see some sun up close and personal. We were however competing with the yearly St. Patrick's Day parade in downtown Buffalo which mostly likely had record numbers due to the perfect weather. I'm sure may of those celebrating were seeing stars of there own after imbibing significant amounts of green beer.
I believe we packed it up around 3:30-4PM with some extra color to our UV deprived and Vitamin D deficient bodies.

Impromptu Astronomy Day at the Buffalo Museum of Science February 21, 2009

I just happened to stop by the museum to see the M101 mural that is a composite image of Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer space telescope images when I saw a young lady sitting at a rather empty table demonstrating how Newtonian reflectors work. It seemed like a nice way to spend an afternoon so I offered my help and went out to my car and grabbed some astronomy related material and the Astroscan scope that was donated to the club by "The Science Kit". It's a great little scope for someone starting out and actually quite enjoyable for those of us that have been at it for a while. The museum actually had one of their own on hand too. It could use a bit of TLC however. I placed a scaled image of the sun approximately 75 feet way from the scope to demonstrate how far the sun would be away if the earth was the size of the small image(4mm) of the earth which I taped to the Astroscan. I also taped a SOHO poster on the railing of the second floor at the other end of Hamlin Hall. Most people just are curious enough to just want to look through the telescope even though we're just look at pictures taped to a wall.
Marilou Bebak manned the table near the M101 mural and answered any questions. I think we packed it up around 5PM. The little young lady above stole my heart 8^)

Impromptu Solar Observing on the roof of the Buffalo Museum of Science January 3, 2009

We thought we would brave the cold winds and hold an impromptu solar observing session on the roof of the Buffalo Museum of Science. We had a nice little crowd of around 75. in spite of the sun being extemely restful in white light we di have some nice prominences to showcase in H-alpha. We left after about 2 hours just short of being frostbitten.

The 12.5" Geiger Scope on loan to the Buffalo Museum of Science January 2, 2009

Alan Friedman (http://www.avertedimagination.com/) and I delivered long time Buffalo Astronomical Association member Edith Geiger's 12.5" Newtonian reflector to the Buffalo Museum of Science. It will be on loan throughout the year for IYA 2009. It will be on display in the center of Hamlin Hall just outside the "First Observer's" and "Alien Earths" exhibits. http://www.sciencebuff.org/
I believe Edith was in her 90's when she passed in May 2008. Edith was a serious astronomer with a sense of humor. I never knew Edith but I know she was an avid observer and she was legendary for her Christmas slide shows. Apparently I've taken on her role in a not so effective way. She was also a huge supporter of our club and Beaver Meadow Observatory. For more on Edith see:
www.orbitjetobservatory.com/baa/Volume%2010%20Issue%204.pdf