National Astronomy Day
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Yesterday, 10 May 2008, was National Astronomy Day in America. Here is El Paso, Texas there was a nice little star party held to celebrate the event.
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The Gene Roddenbery Planetarium (yes, the originator and writer of Star Trek was from El Paso), the Sun City Astronomy Club, and the astronomy clubs from several schools cooperated together to put on an impressive event.
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They met at a football field at a school where the light pollution is as minimal as is possible in a metropolitan area of 2,000,000 wasteful, air and light polluting human beings. Just to help people understand the massive size of the El Paso Metropolitan Area and the Texas Size Distances, I drove from my house to this field (staying inside of the City of El Paso) and drove 30 miles (48 km) each way. My little black doggie Inu went around and made friends with almost everyone there.
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I didn't count them, but I'll bet there were at least 30, maybe 50, telescopes set up for the public to look through. Each telescope had a person in charge of it who would aim it, focus it, answer questions, etc. There were several nice refractors which must have been around 100mm
objective size, a few cassegrains including one really big one, and a horde of invading Dobsonians. Including one massive 14 inch (I think) dob which actually had an original marks-a-lot signature on it's tube made by John Dobson on one of his visits to El Paso. A few of the people (who really had their acts together) had brought along their binoculars too.
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One of the experts there walked me through collimating my dobsonian using a collimation eyepiece. After having read numerous descriptions on paper and the web, and after doing it various times with my laser collimator, now I finally really do understand the process.
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Well done El Paso astronomers!!
Yesterday, 10 May 2008, was National Astronomy Day in America. Here is El Paso, Texas there was a nice little star party held to celebrate the event.
-
The Gene Roddenbery Planetarium (yes, the originator and writer of Star Trek was from El Paso), the Sun City Astronomy Club, and the astronomy clubs from several schools cooperated together to put on an impressive event.
-
They met at a football field at a school where the light pollution is as minimal as is possible in a metropolitan area of 2,000,000 wasteful, air and light polluting human beings. Just to help people understand the massive size of the El Paso Metropolitan Area and the Texas Size Distances, I drove from my house to this field (staying inside of the City of El Paso) and drove 30 miles (48 km) each way. My little black doggie Inu went around and made friends with almost everyone there.
-
I didn't count them, but I'll bet there were at least 30, maybe 50, telescopes set up for the public to look through. Each telescope had a person in charge of it who would aim it, focus it, answer questions, etc. There were several nice refractors which must have been around 100mm
objective size, a few cassegrains including one really big one, and a horde of invading Dobsonians. Including one massive 14 inch (I think) dob which actually had an original marks-a-lot signature on it's tube made by John Dobson on one of his visits to El Paso. A few of the people (who really had their acts together) had brought along their binoculars too.-
One of the experts there walked me through collimating my dobsonian using a collimation eyepiece. After having read numerous descriptions on paper and the web, and after doing it various times with my laser collimator, now I finally really do understand the process.
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Well done El Paso astronomers!!
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------------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry
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