This year’s annual ‘Scout-o-rama’ was held on Saturday the 16th of April. The local boy scout council hosts a ‘merit badge midway’ during the event to introduce different merit badges to the scouts. With several of our members being astronomy merit badge counselors, we support the scouts by setting up a display and, if the weather is clear, telescopes with appropriate filters to view the sun. The scout-o-rama is usually held in tandem with an overnight campout and,again if clear,we transition to nighttime viewing. This year the campout was not held but the daytime event was well attended and the number of boys and parents coming by kept us hopping all day.
We had five scopes set up, all with different views of the sun. It is now quite apparent that the new solar cycle has started as there were several excellent sun spot groups viewable.