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["SISU!" <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

clhw wrote:
> Neat, Bev!
> Not only for the publicity but the doings.
> If you give me enough notice (like maybe a week) and it's not on Friday or
> Saturday, maybe we could join you!

That would be awesome!  We do this twice a year "for the public" to
promote an appreciation for the night sky.  All kinds of folks show up,
from nerdy kids to heart surgeons to redneck hillbillies, so it makes
the night interesting.  Last night, we had a Polish/Czech?? heart
surgeon and his son..they were down on one end speaking Polish?? they
had driven up from Buckhead (a section of Hotlanta) and then there were
a couple of Hispanic families wandering around speaking Spanish that had
driven down from like Cleveland TN, so it was pretty cool to hear all
the excited "wow's". Tone of voice in the darkness is universally
understood.  One guy held his two year old up to our scope and the
little girl exlaimed, "Oh Daddy, I just *love* the stars!"  When you
hear that, it makes it all worthwhile.  There was also an innercity
black kid, an 8th grader, that just impressed the crap out of me with
his knowledge and enthusiasm.  His teacher, a Hispanic guy, was also
there, and in fact, there were quite a few teachers there from 4
different school systems who were basically 'checking us out' for future
events.  Of course, we had plenty of homeschooling families, too.  My
friend Michelle(she's Canadian) and her family drove over from Athens
and camped in the pasture. Aside from the fun of looking through the
scopes, the evening was punctuated by the universality of mankind's
fascination with the heavens.  Our group only has 60 members on the
yahoo list(signing up on yahoo is the only requirement for membership)
and 28 of them showed up last night.  We had 13 different telescopes,
large and small, and our gate attendent clocked 42 guests on her
counter.  That's a pretty good showing-about 70 people in all.  Last
weekend, a rival club had all kinds of press(radio, TV, and print), and
they only had 30 guests total, and 15 of those were from a homeschool
group whose leader is one of our members.  She couldn't come to our
event due to scheduling, so she took the kids to the other event.
Anyway, winning our little attendance competition was sweet, too. :)
For this event, we really targeted the school systems.  We hope that the
various teachers and administrators that came will spread the word and
possibly incorporate our star parties into their curriculum for extra
credit if nothing else.  Once we have the schools onboard, we hope to
target the city administrative officials...only they can help prevent
light pollution, and until you get into the 'dark' you really don't get
the full impact of what you're destroying.  Those officials have the
power to write ordinances for businesses..the city would have another
source of revenue from enforcing the ordinances and they could get
brownie points with the public for their 'green' policies.
Anyway...that's for next year or at least after we know we have the
school system on board.  We already have a partnership with a local
mineral musuem so we are moving up in the world!

> We've had start watching parties in our yard, but it was more meteorite
> watching when the Plieades (sp) or the August showers were due. And the
> technical level was lying on the grass on blankets.

For meteors, that's what you do! If you want to get really nerdy about
it, you can count them and make notes about brightness, radiant, length,
etc.

> When the comet a couple years back was passing, we got a little more
> technical:  had some binoculars we passed around and leaned on car hoods to
> steady them!

Yup..comets are beautiful, and many are best seen with binoculars for
the wide field of view.  I always find it interesting that some comets
get more press than others.  The prettiest comet I've seen was Hyatake,
which came by a few years after Hale Bopp.  Hyatake was like a fuzzy
green snowball looking comet-no discernable tail like HB.
Anyway, here's one that you can see now...Comet Swan
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061004.html
It's no longer as bright as this picture, but it's still visible if you
know where to look.


> It's been many decades since I looked through telescopes. I looked at
> Saturn, Venus, and the moon at various times through the big one at Emory
> U. in Decatur. Otherwise, it was a telescope which belonged to one of my
> dad's secretaries (who was a serious heavens watcher so it was more
> advanced than a paper towel roll). We looked at Mars, the moon, Jupiter,
> and several other things. We were standing in our neighbor's front yard in
> Atlanta proper. The nearest street light was about 5 houses away and
> everyone around turned off any outside lights for the viewing.

Our neighbors, the drunken criminal renters with the chicken killing
dog, were in rare form last night.  It was the only downside of the
night.  They came out, drinking/partying/fighting in their front yard.
Ron had gone over earlier and asked them to turn off their security
light for the party, which they happily agreed to do, but then the dopes
built a bonfire in their front yard smoking up the valley and kept
driving around the yard with their car lights on, blinding everyone on
our side of the road. <sigh>  There was nothing we could do.  Surely,
any idiot can figure this out if they see 70 people milling around a
pasture with red flashlights and no car lights...white lights are
bad..smoke is bad.....country music as loud as the car radio will play
it is bad! <sigh>
Oh well, all in all, it was great and I think everyone had a good time.
 I can't wait until next month to see how many new members we get out
of this!

Lynn, and anyone else who lives within driving/camping distance, you're
welcome to come.  I would enjoy that immensely.

Bev

--
BevanRon of EarthNSky Farm   NW Georgia USDA Zone 7
34.498N 85.076W    Bev is Earth, Ron is Sky