A photo from last night's session.
Long story short, forgot to bring some mount screws but only realised that after I started to set up for solar ob. Anyway was cloudy when I reach there in the late afternoon. Need to go home and come back to Bishan Park anyway and so brought my Celestron 80WA, camera tripod and vixen slo-mo adapter for an evening of sidewalk astronomy. But was glad I manage to shoot some video to show how the Bishan Park ob spot look like for those who still have not been there. Also glad to meet another McDonald's Assistant Manager who was very helpful even though they seemed a little short-handed at that period.
Thanks to Dave for coming along to keep me company despite the initial bad weather. I was glad to meet the Japanese family again and showed them the Moon after they have looked at Saturn at Dave's scope. Adorable kids they have. Glad their son was able to see it this time as it was too late for him previously. Of the whole long string of Japanese uttered in amazement by the mother when she saw Saturn in Dave's scope, I can only understand the word "Honto!!!!????" LOL.
The family was also amazed by the zoomed in views of Moon. Later a couple of students from RJC also dropped by and took a quick look.
A group of young adults was also hanging around and get to see nice views and have their questions answered. The guys among them was obviously amazed by my green laser pointer. A young lady was requesting me to show her friend the "A" shape stars (Jewel Box) she saw right there at Bishan Park before. I was extremely happy to hear that as it means Dave and others have done a terrific job in previous sessions impressing the public that they are starting to bring their other friends to come and take a look.
I showed them a 12.5x wide view with a 32mm plossl on my F/5 80mm. And they were excited to spot the "A" shape again together with the bright star at Crux. This young lady also actually bother to ask me what is the name of the star cluster and recorded it down in her phone so she could google it later. The guys were also keen to ask Dave for his FaceBook page url so they can look at it on their phones immediately.
Dave played around with the Meade 5x Tele-extender and got poisoned as usual but too bad I am at the top of the reserve list.
Was glad to share with him the some basic knowledge about eye relief, exit pupil, floaters and CA on fast refractors.
I have mentioned this many times and last night was yet another example -- do not be afraid of doing sidewalk just only because you think the views through your basic scope will not impress anyone. Last night one lady mentioned that one gentleman showed her a very nice view of the Moon at the same park but somewhere opposite of us. Dave and I found out shortly it must be a 50mm long refractor and who this person is. So if you are the one reading this right now, THANK YOU for impressing yet another person and helping to increase astronomy awareness in Singapore!
By the time I was free enough to look at Mars through the 4" OMNI XLT, it was still sharp and the ice cap obvious. Those who have seen it when it was even clearer and higher up in the sky were very fortunate indeed! Saturn look really bright and crispy at the suitable magnification. The 7mm-21mm budget variable zoom eyepiece together with a 2x barlow worked really well for lunar planetary observing and makes finding the right magnification a piece of cake without the constant need to change eyepieces back and forth.
The 4" splitted Alpha Centauri cleanly. And it is important to immediately show viewers how our naked eyes can only discern one star. Their "wows" usually come at the very moment they look away from the eyepiece and at with star with their naked eyes. Else, it is just 2 dots very close to each other in the telescope view. No big deal. They also had fun trying to figure out the colours of Mizar and Alcor.
The sidewalk momentum at Bishan Park is really building up. Can't wait to see Dave realise his sidewalk plans there in the years to come!