Finding the Time February 6, 2008
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When I first signed up to have a blog I knew carving out time to post would be a challenge but it seems it’s even more of a challenge than I imagined. The weeks have just flown by. I did start a draft of a posting a couple of weeks ago but it never went anywhere. Well, I don’t want to admit defeat just yet. I haven’t even given it a fair shot.
So let me share something special that happened a couple of weeks ago. Last fall I signed up to be a volunteer at a local observatory. It’s a rather low-budget observatory on one of our community college campuses. It’s main purpose is public outreach and is run entirely by volunteers. Well since I’ve signed up we’ve just had one of the worst winters for sky watching. One Friday it was clear at dusk but clouded up shortly thereafter and then the event of two weeks ago was mostly clear. Otherwise it’s been nothing but clouds (or worse).
So the event on January 25th was my first real opportunity to share the night sky with an observing public at the observatory, (I’ve helped out at public star parties with the local astronomy club a number of times but the observatory is a special experience). We only had 6 people show, (there were 3 of us volunteers) but still it was a blast to show them a few objects they might have heard about, (Andromeda galaxy, Orion nebula, Pleiades, Mars) and quite a few that they haven’t, (numerous open clusters in Auriga and Gemini as well as colorful double stars in Andromeda and Cassiopeia). We had a few binoculars to hand out to better appreciate the larger objects such as the Pleiades and the Hyades but anything to the west was a challenge as it looked out over the city.
It didn’t take long for everyone to get pretty cold so the evening didn’t drag on. Just a nice chunk of time to share a few beauties, spin a story or two and send everyone on their way with a smile.
As I get better at this I am hoping to weave in some entertaining stories from mythology with the stunning sights of the season.
And I hope to be a little more frequent at this as well 
