Astronomy Day 2001 - April 28th
at the Irvine Spectrum Center and Crystal Cove State Park.
A report by Liam Kennedy

National Astronomy Day is one day per year where we have an opportunity to join with many other organizations with a concerted effort to "Bring Astronomy to the People".

The past few years the day has been less than useful as far as viewing - as the weather generally did not cooperate. Unfortunately - this year was no exception to the trend.

One of our events were canceled - and the other had very limited opportunity for quality viewing.

Irvine Spectrum Center

We had planned to exhibit from Noon until about 9pm initially for daytime viewing of the Sun, Moon and maybe even a few planets. Moving into the evening until 9pm we'll pretty much be just showing the moon. On the day the morning started with dense low cloud - and didn't really improve all that much throughout the day. Near the end of our time - for about the last hour we managed to get some quality time looking at Sun spots as the clouds had started to thin out at that time.

In any case - we met many OC Residents who were very interested in what we had to show and wanted to get lots of information about our club - so despite the poor conditions I know that we probably recruited at least a dozen new members.

We had a very small area to setup telescopes - but it was plenty large enough for our needs.

The following members helped out on this day;

Mitchell Nunn: Meade LX-10 8"
Anthony Obra: Celestron 8"
Liam Kennedy: Meade LX200 10"
Anna Kennedy: helped with setup/breakdown

You can see below some photos of our setup at the Spectrum. We had setup a display including live images of the Sun from the SOHO satellite. I managed to hook up my computer to the Internet using a wireless connection. This allowed us to show passersby what they would be able to see if the clouds were not there.

Click to see larger image

Mitch and Tony - is that the Sun we can see?
click for larger image

Thank-you Irvine Company for their support in arranging for us to setup up on their property.

Crystal Cove State Park.

This was canceled due to the cloud cover!

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May 16th 2001