In churches all across the country, an event called “Galactic Starveyors” was being put on by VBS. One participating church, Brentwood Baptist, reached out to HAS and asked if we could bring out some telescopes and give a talk about the stars. We wound up showing the full Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn (and a very red star).

Night Sky Network Log:

Event Date: Thursday, 6/8/2017
Name of Event/Service: Brentwood Baptist Church VBS “Galactatic Starveyors”
Type of Service: Public Outreach
# of Hours: 1

Description of Service Performed: We set up next to a large field behind a parking lot around sundown, alongside 3 other scopes. A group came out at around 8:30 and we showed them the full moon. They wanted to know what else there was to see, and fortunately Jupiter was beginning to show itself, so next we showed them that. As the first group left, another wave of people arrived, and it was quite busy for a while, with the groups of people dwindling in size as the night went on. The rest of the night was spent on the Moon and Jupiter until Saturn rose, by which point the crowd had thinned out somewhat, but there were still some people to appreciate the view.

Comments: There was a boy who came with his grandma and seemed quite interested, and wanted to look at something other than Saturn, the Moon, or Jupiter. He pointed out Antares, and asked what it was; I told him that it was a star called Antares, and he could find it in the telescope if he wanted. He did, after a little bit of searching and focusing. He wasn’t too interested in hearing about why the unfocused star had a hole in it, or why the disk flickered, or anything like that, though. He also asked me to point the telescope at Saturn, and then point a laser at Saturn while he was watching, and I did so. He was expecting the laser dot to show up on Saturn, so Joe Khalaf used this as a teaching opportunity about the laser.

.

.