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(meteorobs) reaching the public
From Mark Davis's NAMN Notes:
>
> Another venue related to this, is sidewalk astronomy. One of the most
> active groups in Canada, the Ottawa Valley Astronomy and Observers Group,
> has been doing impromptu telescope sessions in shopping mall parking lots.
> Not only do they show people the moon and some of the brighter sky
objects -
> but they hand out brochures on the North American Meteor Network! Check
out
> their website at http://members.homedot net/observers-group/
>
> The basic idea in reaching out to new people is that you will get more
> response - if you go to where the people are! Using public places - like
> schools, or front lawns on Halloween, or shopping mall parking lots - will
> help get the word out to kids about astronomy, and meteors, and light
> pollution for that matter - far better than just waiting for them to find
> us!
I can vouch for the effectiveness of doing this, and encourage you to try
it. Our planetarium sponsors a couple of public star parties a year
typically with an attendance of 25 to 50 people. The visitors (children and
adults) not only see things in telescopes, there is also time for watching
for satellites and meteors, explaining the basics of how to buy a telescope,
and answering other questions they may have. We also do sidewalk
astronomy -- a few weeks ago we set up three telescopes at a festival to
show people the sun in visual and hydrogen-alpha filters as well as Venus in
daytime. In seven hours, 470 people saw the H-alpha sun (that's about 1
person a minute for seven hours!), and most of them looked through the other
two telescopes, too. Sure the telescope operators fried, but that's a lot
of people we introduced to astronomy that day and it was worth it. We'll be
doing star parties and sidewalk astronomy monthly at various places in our
area for the next year or so as our planetarium closes for refurbishing and
moving to a new building, but I'm confident that we'll see hundreds of
people at our telescopes during that time and we'll be able to keep teaching
astronomy effectively. We already have handouts about light pollution, but
Ottawa's idea of handouts about NAMN is a pretty good one!
This will be the first Halloween that my kids are too old for trick or
treating, and I'm planning to put my own telescope out that night. If
you've never done something like that before, this might be a good
opportunity to try it because the crowd you draw shouldn't be too
overwhelming. Just be sure to have something safe for kids to stand on to
get to your eyepiece and be aware that public telescopes do take a beating.
People will grab the eyepiece like it's trying to get away from them unless
you tell them not to touch when they look (I tell them touching the
telescope makes it shake so they won't see as well, which usually gets their
cooperation). You'll need to clean the eyepiece afterward to get the face
make-up off it. This is not a place to use your most delicate and
sophisticated equipment! But think of how many potential light pollution
hating sky observers you can inspire.
Dave Hostetter
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