New Egypt School Star Party

We were treated to clear skies last night for a great starparty for the New Egypt Middle School.

The teacher, Mrs. Mayer, did a great job of organizing the crowd (150 plus kids and parents). They literally busloaded them to the side of the school where we were observing.

In attendance were Penny Fischer with a friend helping out, as well as Rev. Paul Amey, of new Egypt, who had his Edmund Scientific 6 inch reflector. Fred Block of S*T*A*R showed up with his great 10 inch Discovery Dob, and Sue Rifkin and her friend of S*T*A*R showed up with her 8 inch Meade Starfinder. We also had an "almost member" (and professed webpage/bb lurker) named Wayne show up with his 10 inch side-truss tube "Alice"-designed Dobsonian reflector.

We lined the scopes up and each had a different planet/object in the field. Between the near-quarter moon, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and Orion we had plenty of things to whoa the crowd for almost two hours.

Everyone did a great job (as usual our S*T*A*R people are natural educators!!)! Thanks so much for all your help. I know that it would have been overwhelming without us there. As it was, the lines were 10 deep at any given scope.

Fred Block attempted some astrophotography, and I see that he got a pretty decent shot of Saturn through the old "hand-held digitized" method.

As the stars would have it, it was almost completely clouded over by the time we got back home.

Thanks again everyone, for coming and making it such a successful night!