KAON Report Saturday September 8th 2012
Last night was the first Kingston Astronomy Outreach Network (KAON) of the new season. It is the last running in the summer hours of 9-10:30pm and the October 13th open house will start at 7:30pm
Nathalie Ouellette, Queen’s Observatory Coordinator introduced Dr. Gregg Wade of the Royal Military College gave a talk on the Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover to a full room of 75 people. A good review of images and video from the event a month ago.
After it ended 32 minutes later, the observing Deck was unexpectedly open (we were expecting cloud and rain and thunderstorms).
Terry Bridges operated the Queens Meade telescope, and Kim Hay, Brian Hunter, Susan Gagnon, Rose Marie Burke and myself were working the crowd.
We have added a new neutral density moon filter to the Fitzgerald telescope accessory list, to complement the green one that was with the scope.
We packed it in after 10:30pm and had looked at a very few targets of opportunity, given a good cloud haze and light pollution, of M31 (Andromeda Galaxy), Alberio (double star), Mizar (double star) and M8 (the Lagoon nebula).
The Fitzgerald telescope is a 20cm RASC-KC made dobsonian that is dedicated to the KAON sessions. It is dead simple to set up and use and anyone who would like to operate it during a session just has to show up and do it!
The only operational drawback to the scope is that it moves in altitude far too easily.
We’ve roughed up the bearings, moved the teflon contact points farther apart, but it still gets moved by every person coming up to it and leaning on it.
The observatory also has a queensobservtory.tumblr.com webpage set up for images and other information.