The weather cooperated fully with the Tuesday event at Bluewater Bay Elementary School. We had a very good turnout of students, parents and teachers. We had an even better turnout of equipment as we set a NWFAA Star View record with 16 telescopes on site.
Club members Dave Halupowski, Frank Atchison, Tom Haugh, Ken Leone and Dennis Hausch all brought scopes. However, an additional 10 were brought by our guest observers and the final one was the excellent iOptron Maksutov that the school owns. There were several quick lessons on setting up and aligning the scopes as the sun set and there were plenty of excellent questions to answer.
The moon provided the first target of the evening. Venus, now in a crescent phase, quickly became the focus as the sky darkened and then Mars and Saturn in turn as each became visible. All were well observed with a few other celestial objects thrown in for variety.
We would like to thank the teachers and staff of Bluewater Bay Elementary School for their invitation. The enthusiasm of the guest observers along with the sheer number of telescopes made this a very fun event.