Toa Payoh Sidewalk Astronomy tonight outside Courts - 18 Jun

[Airconvent]

Thanks for sharing Gary, the bazooka is a whopper! And the turn out looks great too. Did you place some sort of placard there to publicise for singastro too? They can log in to watch the event..

[kensou]

woah! stunned startin with me shooting the moon! thanks gary! very nice!

[Gary]

Thanks for sharing Gary, the bazooka is a whopper! And the turn out looks great too. Did you place some sort of placard there to publicise for singastro too? They can log in to watch the event..

@airconvent -- Yeah. The turnout was amazing. We didn't place any placard there. But for the curious few who did ask, we did mention about this forum.

There was a portable power generator on standby. But all of us are too busy "serving" the queues and helping each other out. If even more forum members can come to support such events, we definitely can do something bigger like live streaming and video astronomy. And have a person dedicated to spreading the word about Singastro down each queue.

woah! stunned startin with me shooting the moon! thanks gary! very nice!

@kensou -- No problem. Glad you like it. Perhaps next video I will start zooming out from a fungus on my scope. LOL.

[Gary]

Weather permitting, I will be conducting a sidewalk astronomy session at Toa Payoh Central tonight.

Date: Tue 8 May 2012
Time: From 7:45 PM onwards
Venue: Open space in front of Toa Payoh Public Library [Google Map] [Street View]

Primary focus: Saturn, Moon, Mars.

I will be bringing the Intes Micro MN56 5-inch Maksutov-Newtonian Telescope, Meade 5x TeleXtender (on loan from Clifford) and WO Binoviewer. Others may be coming down with their telescopes.

ARIANE 5 R/B Satellite flypast tonight from 8:18pm at 0.5 brightness. Then making a "UFO" disappearance at 63° elevation:
http://www.heavens-above.com/passdetail ... 6&size=600


Come join in the fun with or without telescope!

[Gary]

Very high chance a spanking new Celestron 8-inch SCT telescope (not mine) will join in the fun tonight.

[Gary]

Event is a go.

Some haze, some thin moving clouds now. But overall, way much bluer than past 4 days combined. And at least I can visually tell the Sun is setting now.

[Airconvent]

Oh man...Just saw your post but I'm already home and settled. Have fun over there with the 8-incher...!

[Gary]

Weather permitting, I will be conducting a sidewalk astronomy session at Toa Payoh Central tonight.

Date: Sunday 10 June 2012
Time: From 7:00 PM onwards
Venue: Open space in front of Toa Payoh Public Library [Google Map] [Street View]

Primary focus: Saturn, Mars, Moon (late after midnight), star clusters at Scorpius and Sagittarius.

I will be bringing my 5-inch telescope.

Come join in the fun with or without telescope!

**********************************************************************************

Depending on their rising and setting time in a relatively clear dark sky, these are the objects that can be seen in a typical stargazing session in Singapore (including the brightly lit Toa Payoh Central):

- Planets and Moon
- Star Clusters (Tight grouping of stars with some forming interesting imaginary shapes.)
- Double Stars (A pair of stars that appears to be close together.)
- Globular Clusters (A tight circular grouping of stars in the hundreds and thousands.)
- Nebulae (Cosmic cloud of dust and gases.)
- Galaxies (The biggest grouping of stars and stellar remnants. Very tough to see but not impossible under good conditions.)

[Gary]

Was wondering how come never see Dave post his Bishan sidewalk report and then I realised this was a Toa Payoh sidewalk event. The damage weeks of pasar malam have done to my consciousness. Was kind of subconsciously scanning around Toa Payoh Central looking for a bridge over a "river".

Sky was crazy blue the whole day:



Went to the area to do a quick check of the tearing down of the pasar malam tentage at about 5pm. Was very impressive with the efficiency of the workers. By the time we set up at about 7:30pm, almost 95% of the tentage was gone.

After setting up our scopes. Cloud cover! (the real thing! not my friend:)) Around 9pm the sky cleared up and we were happily showing the public Saturn, Alpha Centauri, Jewel Box, NGC 6231. Seeing was good. I was able to focus with a 32mm EP --> 2x Barlow --> 5x Telextender --> 762mm scope.

Thanks to everyone who came for the event -- Dave, Avarielle, Kensou, Clifford. Honoured to be involved with most probably the last public appearance of the 4" OMNI XLT refractor.





Later at around 11pm+ when everyone has left except kensou and me, a mother and daughter pair came to look at Saturn through the scope. The mother finally get to see Saturn for the first time in her life and could not contain her excitement any more. I forgotten what she actually said while she was looking at Saturn as I was a little distracted to the prolonged loudness of her exclamations and wondered if I should be a kill joy to ask her to lower her voice a bit.

Her teenage daughter was very interested about astronomy and was very happy to get her first live looks at Saturn with a 32mm + 5x telextender and a wide NGC6231 view with just the 32mm. They can't wait to go back home and tell the father what they saw that night and how lucky they were.

Clouds rolled in again and it was time to finally packed up. The couple and kensou did manage to see how I took my own sweet time to squeeze my 29.5 inch long scope and plastic boxes of accessories into one backpack.

Looking forward to sidewalks in July.

[kensou]

great sum up!