I mentioned on the 90 MilliMeter Facebook page that a few changes were coming to the 90 MilliMeter Observatory and now, a few of those changes are beginning to take place. The first thing you’ll notice is the new look for the website. We thought we would clean it up a bit and make it easier to read. Tell us what you think.

Next, a few equipment upgrades were in order. We’re keeping the Celestron 60mm refractor and the 90 mm – the observatory staple, is undergoing a little refurbishing and should be back online by the end of September. We’ve added a 120mm refractor to the line up and replaced the Celestron Omni XLT 150R with an Explore Scientific AR152.

Additional plans currently on the board include astronomy outreach projects where we’ll setup solar telescopes during community events as well as supporting local astronomy clubs with their public star parties. We want to reach out to the area schools and provide them with a “Family Astronomy Night” which would include a indoor presentation followed by observing through telescopes for a hour or two. as I said, these plans are currently on the board and have not been finalized. With a little hard work everything should be in place by the end of the year.

Finally, I had the opportunity to go to a couple of dark sky sites and get in some observing with the new ES AR152 refractor so, shortly I’ll post an observing report and let you know what we think of the new telescope.

Clear Skies,

Dan

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On April 5th Chesmont Astronomical Society hosted a a star party for one of our local grade schools. The program included an indoor presentation by our club president which covered a brief history of astronomy, how the sky looked tonight, the types of telescopes the students would be looking through and what deep sky objects they may see in with those telescopes. The program also talked about light pollution and the effect it has on society and the night sky.

Once the students came outdoors to look through the telescopes, the things they learned about during the presentation began to come to life. Many of the students never looked through a telescope of any kind and this experience was one they are going to remember. We had 7 telescopes setup from a 60mm refractor to 22 inch Dobsonian.

The students and their parents enjoyed looking at everything from double stars (iota Cancer) to the the Orion Nebula and M81 and M82 in Ursa Major. Clearly the favorite object was the Orion Nebula. Open and Globular clusters were also viewed.

Astronomy outreach is so very important to children throughout the world. Many children never get the opportunity to see first hand the wonders of the universe, and only see it through media such as photos and TV. You never really know how much of an impression you make on someone when you share your knowledge and your telescope. Who knows, maybe one of those students will be come a better student because they now realize there’s another world out there to explore, maybe, one of them becomes the next great Einstein.

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