Dear ACA Members, 20121013
Recently several groups have
asked us to present an astronomy program at their events. This is quite a compliment.
First, let's
review. The purpose of our club is to
develop astronomy observing expertise, particularly in our members. As a
public service organization, we also want to bring astronomy awareness to as
many people as possible. Please consider volunteering next year so we can all
enjoy the experience.
We presented the same
program last year at SEED with more volunteers.
This year, five people who committed
to help were no-shows. That puts us in
an embarrassing position, costing the RPSEC unused T-shirts and lunches. It makes it harder for those who do come to
carry out the planned program. Eight volunteers
are retired. Eight volunteers are new members on the team
this year. They did a great job and
learned sooo much, but our club, with 50 families, is
big enough to have backup volunteers. I
know several of us who never had a chance for a bathroom break. We need YOU!
In the distant past, we
were able to present astronomy programs at malls and parking lots, but they
don't want the liability any more.
School programs were often combined with open house, with diluted
attention, or with too many babies. We
have gradually found that SEED brings in a great crowd for our effort. Gary Senn has been very supportive and helped publicize National
Astronomy Night in the spring at RPSEC, which also brings in a good crowd. Gary also wants us to do IOMN (International
Observe the Moon Night) in September. We
are still working out the logistics for that, but it worked out pretty well
this year. Having Lunar observing after
our meetings has also been convenient and pleasant for us and the public who
come - at least when we have clear skies. ASU has been very helpful by turning off their
parking lot lights on our meeting nights.
We know that ASU would like to develop their astronomy observing
opportunities for the public. We think
this would be a good venue and would like to help them. However, they have changed their astronomy
professor 3 times in the past 3 years, and have had trouble getting it off
the ground. This has even caused
competing dates, which we certainly don't want.
Last year we got a date worked out, and it rained! We will try again this year. We are off to a good start with a nice new
professor who has already joined our club.
One of our concerns is
that we haul a lot of our equipment, information boards, and materials around
with us. Doing this 2-3 times a year is
fine enough, but more than that will take more people, more expertise, and more
volunteer effort.
For our current short-notice
invitations, we have selected small teams of more experienced members to scope
out these new possibilities. They will
report back to us. If you are an experienced astronomer, and feel that you can also
volunteer for a public outreach program, please let me know what opportunities
interest you most.
Please put all our
meeting and observing dates for this year on your calendar and plan to attend to develop your personal astronomy skills.
That is two activities per month. Astronomy expertise, even a moderate ability,
is a joyous lifetime development process. It takes some time and attention, and is not a
one night or one year project. During the coming year our experienced members will try to help develop astronomy skills in each
member that will enable us all to better share with the wider public. They are generous and always come. To our newer members, we hope you will come and take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to learn and then share with others. I look forward to
hearing from you, and seeing you at our meetings and observing. Clear skies,
Tedda and your ACA Officers Tedda, Stan, Kenneth, John, and Dot
Most importantly, we
do not want to forego the time needed to develop our member observing skills.
