Earth Hour Sidewalk Astro @Orchard Rd: Sat 19 Mar 2016

[rlow]

LATEST UPDATE:

We will be having Earth Hour Sidewalk Astronomy at Orchard Rd. Earth Hour is from 8:30pm to 9:30pm tomorrow.

Date : Tomorrow Sat 19 Mar 2016
Time : 8:00pm to 10:00pm
Venue : Mandarin Orchard (outside Mandarin Gallery)
Scope : APM 100mm APO Bino with Doctor 12.5mm pair

All are welcome to join us





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ORIGINAL POST:
We will be having Earth Hour Sidewalk Astro at Orchard Rd. Weather permitting.

Date : Today 23 Mar 2013
Time : 7:30pm to 11:00pm
Venue : Mandarin Orchard (outside Mandarin Gallery)
Scope : 80mm - scaled down due to poor sky:(

All are welcome to join

[Bergkamp_]

Nice.. right in the middle of orchard!

[Airconvent]

Hi Richard. Nice venue but won't you be restricted to zenith viewing only?

[Gary]

Good job Rlow! The more places to let the public enjoy visual astronomy the better! With the crowd there tonight, can get the maximum sidewalk value out of the same amount of time.

[rlow]

Well Airconvent....I think the restricted sky view is ok if we can just observe the Moon, Jupiter and/or Saturn through the 15" dob at high power, that should be quite enough to keep us busy. Just hope the sky is clear for all of us tonight:)

[cloud_cover]

Hahaha! I wish I could take some time off to walk down to join you guys! Have fun!
Do set up where the trees won't block. West will be opposite and facing against the direction of traffic so take that into account when positioning for Jupiter!

[Airconvent]

Well Airconvent....I think the restricted sky view is ok if we can just observe the Moon, Jupiter and/or Saturn through the 15" dob at high power, that should be quite enough to keep us busy. Just hope the sky is clear for all of us tonight:)

Great..I hope you don't spoil them with the 15"! Otherwise their first scope will have to be 15" since nothing lesser will do !
Don't think I can make it but if I can, definitely will drop by to check it out. Have a good one this evening, rlow!

[rlow]

We are setup at the corner of Mandarin Gallery, opposite H&M...

[rlow]

Here's a short report:

We observed from 7:30pm to 11pm at Orchard Road outside Mandarin Gallery, opposite the H&M store. There were quite a lot of people were thrilled to view the Moon through a simple 3.1" achromat. By a conservative estimate...there were about one thousand people from all walks of life, from men in business suits to the uncle road sweeper, from small kids to grandparents, from locals to tourists from LA, USA. I shelved the idea of bringing the 15" dob due to the poor weather. But due to the overwhelming public response to the views through the humble 80mm achromat, I should say the event objective was met successfully.

the sidewalk astronomy outreach at Orchard Road...


the simple Orion ST-80 achromat setup...


about a dozen of the public were happy to capture this simple moon shot thru their handphone...

[Gary]

Awesome job Rlow and nice report!

Seeing how portable your setup was, I am sure some of them will seriously start to entertain the idea of taking up this hobby with a similar setup!

Thanks for proving again there are still so many people who have not even seen the Moon through a telescope and even if they did, do not mind queuing up to see it again!

So contrary to some beliefs of some telescope owners, Moon is not a boring object to the sidewalk public and you do not really need to go to great lengths to impress them for every sidewalk session.

Also, this is yet another prove to our enthusiastic newcomer that he should not be shy of bringing out his 130mm dobsonian to "serve" the public and join us in our sidewalk events.

Totally agree with you the event was a great success!