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Donna Klein Jewish Academy
January 15, 2008
Jay Albert
On January 15th, Fred and Willette Lehman, George DeBarros, Jeff Woods, Jim Mayes, Tom Sarko and I set up telescopes for students, teachers and parents of the 5th grade of the Donna Klein Jewish Academy in Boca Raton. The sky was hazy and very light polluted with some high, thin clouds and a breeze from the north. I didn't try to count the number of visitors, but I believe we must have had over 100 people during the course of the evening. We observed the Moon, Mars, M42, M31 and some other objects. Everyone was impressed with Fred's big telescope and computer set-up as well as by the various sights in our telescopes.
I spent nearly all my time on the Moon, alternating between wide field views in my Celestron NexStar 6 SE (the replacement for my 4" Maksutov, which I traded in) and 188x views of selected lunar objects. The kids and the parents loved the zoomed-in views of the lunar landscape and I had an unending line of visitors the entire evening. They especially enjoyed the close-up view of the crater Ptolemeus, which is lava-filled, around 100 miles wide and could hold most of South Florida and sunrise on the peaks of the Tenerife Mountains rising out of the shadows of the lunar night. At the end, I showed Mars to some of the remaining kids and parents, who were able to see the edge of the north polar cap, some limb haze and some of the darker features, such as Acidalium Mare in the north and Erythraeum Mare in the south.
We had a good time and were impressed by the enthusiasm, "ooh's & aah's" and, in a few cases, the knowledge of the visitors. We were invited back for next year.
Regards,
Jay
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