It was our first time out at the Valley with the telescopes in months. The night sky was wonderfully clear and crisp around 22 degrees out. I think Ian, Justin and lasted about 20 minutes. We did get to see a beautiful crescent Venus, M42 in Orion, and the favorite was the moon which beautifully highlighted the craters of our paper moon project-Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus, and Arzachel which appeared on the the LPOD on January 26, 2009. Montes Apenninus were equally as striking in our telescopes. The skies were a bit too illuminated for us to locate Comet Lulin however. Hopefully we'll get out again next Wednesday.
Glad you were able to catch some photons! I bet the kids were excited to see first hand the modeled lunar features. Nothing like viewing the Moon thru a refractor! After the Moon are you planning any other astronomy projects for these guys?
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Thanks Richard for your kind comments. It is very challenging at times but is equally rewarding. Since we are not expecting a dramatic change in our weather for a couple week yet we'll continue with our indoor projects. We have to still comlete our paper mache moon globes as well as begin to build our exoplanet spacecraft from the parts of the printer we disassembled--Maybe the Kepler mission can provide us with some possible destinations 8^) Separate from our Valley activities our Astronomy club(Buffalo Astronomical Association) has a lot of activities planned for IYA2009 over the next 2-3 months. Although I am a pathetic blogger it is a nice way to document our astronomy activities. I just may have to begin another one for those club events.
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