Photo: www.sterrenwacht.nl
The Sterrenwacht Limburg was one of the science centres involved in the Nationale Sterrenkijkdagen last weekend and since Steven and I are volunteers now, we went both Friday and Saturday evening. We attracted about 200 visitors in total and it was a lot of fun to see some of them reacting to what we were showing them through our telescopes.
The first evening, Steven had his own 80mm refractor outside and I took the visitors by the hand to have a look through it. A little boy exclaimed: “Kapot vet” when he saw the Moon this big, which can only be translated as the new term for awesome. His sister said she could now see at least a thousand craters and there was this other adorable little guy, who just kept staring and staring. When I asked him what he saw he said he was looking for the guy with the flag he had seen on a picture inside (!) Also heard that evening: “Wow, I had never seen the Moon in real life before!”
Meanwhile, as we were standing right outside the forest pointing out constellations, we heard a couple of teenagers further down the path hanging around. One of those guys couldn’t fight his curiosity and came up to us to ask what we were doing. When I answered, we both realised I was his mentor last year! We showed him ‘our’ Moon and told him that the planet Jupiter (right next to it) has many of them. When he had seen the four moons surrounding Jupiter, he called his friends saying they had to see this.
I was so busy enjoying the evening, that I hadn’t instantly noticed Norbert was giving an interview for the local newspaper: the Limburgs Dagblad. He described me as one of the crowd-pullers, being the famous discoverer of Hanny’s Voorwerp. There was this lovely man who had me tell my story to his whole family a couple of times indeed! And I kind of literally pulled a crowd, when I brought along my aunt, uncle and little cousin Valesca the next evening.
We had arrived early and went for a walk first. Valesca, while getting a piggyback ride from Steven, suddenly shouted she saw “three-in-a-row”! When we told her that was very well spotted and what it was called, she said out loud as though she was trying to remember: “Orion, Orion, Orion”. Way past her bedtime, she still couldn’t get enough of it all. Steven and I have promised her a visit in her garden with our scope soon. It was a good weekend. Oh and we did make the newspaper.
The Moon. I posted the specifics on twitter.
And a close-up, which was rather popular too.
Valesca and her dad looking through a telescope.
Steven in the dome. Picture from Limburger.
One Comment
It was a fun and successful weekend! Lots of interested people and luckily clear skies most of the time.