Here Comes the Sun, Doot in Doo doo... On Earthday @ Beaver Meadow Nature Preserve April 18, 2009

It was a great day at the preserve in North Java today. The BAA Solar Crew assisting were- Scott Smith, Pat Lannon, and Jim Lehman. The weather was quite nice for April 18th- About high 60 degrees but a bit breezy. Some of the exhibitors had to take hold of their tents at times.
Of course again we were shut out of sunspots in white light again but fortunately there were a few nice prominences to show in H-Alpha. Its still nice to show the sun in white light to demonstrate the difference in filters and be able to discuss the filters and what they allows us to see on the sun.

Many of the visitors were wowed by the solar prominences and surprised as to there actual size. We did our our chromosphere vs the photosphere routine throughout the day and handed out a lot of NASA/SOHO material. Over 200 people attended the Earth Day festivities. We shined a little extra (Sun)light on the day.

Following the daytime observing we continued with Public Night Observing however atmosheric conditions were not very cooperative for us to take advantage of the dark sky location and moonless night. We did have about 20 visitors though in spite of the poor forecast. In between the clouds we were able to showcase Saturn and its moons, Binary's- Algieba-gamma leonis, Iota Cancri, Mizar/Alcor, Polaris, M35/36/37/38, M41, M44- "the Beehive", Asterisms- Napolean's Hat in Arcturus and the Stargate asterism. Pat Lannon, Scott Smith, Steve Smith, Dan Marcus, Derek Bill, and Joe Orzechowski, and I hosted the nights presentation of celestial wonders.

After the folks left we did some extra observing with Steve Smiths 12" Dob - Leo Triplet, M51, M104 Sombrero, and a last look at Saturn. Left happy at 11PM. An early one and the wife was surprised!

University Of Buffalo's SEDS Observing Session___ April 9, 2009

I wanna go back to college! What a fun night of observing we had up on the campus of the University of Bufallo with the SEDS Club-"Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (http://www.ubseds.org). Although under the immense glow of university lighting we had a spectacular view of a rising full moon over the campus, Saturn which always gets them excited, gamma leonis, M35 and a few others. We had 5 scopes on hand for the students. In addition to the SEDS members quite a few students passing by feasted on some of our celestial wonders that were on stage for the evening. We had a great group of energetic and enthusiastic college kids.

Thanks to Mike Israel, Gary Flagg, Frank Pirrone, Dan Marcus, Mark Percy, Carl Milazzo, Jim Lehman, and Pat Lannon for their assistance. All I believe are trying to get in for the Fall semester.

Thanks to our gracious UB student hosts Brad Cheetham, Matt Cannella, Salman Iqbal, Dan Pastuf, Colton Steiner, Andre Steiner, and others.
We are looking forward to helping them out again with some of their events on and off campus .

Definitely makes you want to go back to college. Hope I get accepted for Fall '09 semester. Go Bulls!

"100 Hours of Astronomy-- Solar SUNday Part II" @ Buffalo Museum of Science__ April 5, 2009

Finally a break in the cloud cover over Western NY just in time for Solar SUNday. It was a bit chilly and breezy up on the roof of the Museum and I conveniently found fellow BAA members Bob and new member Anu to man my solar scope. I took cover on the floor below to man the Solar Info Booth and answer question, hand out astro info, explain the difference between white light filters vs H-alpha and the chromosphere vs the photosphere, and give a quick overview to the visitors what they would be seeing though our safely filtered telescopes.

Its funny that at every event we're asked if it will be safe to look through our scopes at the bright sun. My standard reply is that ever since some kid was blinded years ago we've become much more sensitive to that particular issue and have implemented much greater safeguards with our solar telescopes. You do have an extra eye just in case. Of course we do frequently stress especially to the kids not to observe the sun without proper eye protection. We ended up with 3 scopes with H-alpha filters and one with a white light filter which displayed a perfectly unblemished sun.

We always have one or 2 people who just don't want to look. I just don't get that. Aren't you just a little bit curious what it looks like? Overall we had some great folks with their kids show up for the day. Even on elderly retired teacher was impressed and commended us for doing so much to promote the love of science and astronomy which she knows is sadly missing in our schools today.
I had some great help from fellow BAA member Richard Janas who actually took an astronomy class from Ernst Both at the museum some 50+ years ago along with Cliff Stoll.
www.avertedimagination.com/BAA/IYA_press_release.pdf

Well we had at least 150 or so people make it up to the roof for the solar observing event. I had my traveling astronomy roadshow going on on the 4th floor -- which included a my large screen projector showing of the DVD "Brilliant Noise" -an awesome short movie of amazing solar images to 8-10 different soundtracks. If you haven't seen it check out:
www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/Brilliant_Noise/BNoise.htm

Thanks again to our illustrious outreach leader and club president Alan Friedman (http://www.avertedimagination.com/), and Rich Pason, new member Bill Brown, Rich Fusani, Mark Morgis, new member Anu, Bob Hughes, Rich Janus, and Mike Benz.