Hi Larry!
You without a voice...now that I'm having trouble imaging. Great report and
thank-you for your tireless efforts in promoting amateur astronomy. Your report
is just in time. Rob has been lamenting about our rather quiet group site as of
late. Well what can you expect if it is raining all the time.

I hope the voice comes back soon!!

Cheers, Chris.
----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Stewart
To: OAOG
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 3:29 PM
Subject: [OAOG] Lecture report from the Polaris 23 S/F Convention.





Greeting all!

Well, I still don't have much of a voice yet because of the damned
air-conditioning in the hotel where the Science Fiction convention took
place this past weekend but I can at least report in print how the astronomy
panels went.

The first panel was "Backyard Astronomy 101", aimed at new and
relatively inexperienced would-be astronomers. I was on this panel with Tom
Keegan and one other person whose name was not recorded. (I beleive that Tom
is with the Toronto chapter of the RASC). The panel went extremely well with
much passion and enthusiasm. Many questions were fielded on everything from
"How do I get started?" to questions about cameras on telescopes. Our
audience was quite excited to get so many questions answered and I, of
course, had to also provide some funnier tales of things like Laser-Pointer
duels and instruments freezing up completely on those cold winter sessions.
I prefaced this with "You know you're addicted to astronomy when...!"

I also mentioned that getting star charts and studying them was a great
way to learn the sky. I proudly told them about Denis Legualt, the "Human
Go-to" as a prime example of how such studies benefit one. (I also mentioned
myself, and my prediliction for always landing back on the Lagoon Nebula,
good ol' M8!) This got lots of good-natured laughs. Rock also got more than
a passing mention from both myself AND Tom about the Mallin-cam and this
generated a lot of interest, especially when I described Rock's photos of
Messiers taken in the daytime. "You just can't imagine seeing a galaxy
hanging in a blue sky...IN FULL DETAIL!" I then said that if Rock improves
things much more he'll have to burned at the stake as a sorceror! :-)=) We
finished up with enthusiastically talking about our experiences with clubs,
groups and the RASC. I fairly bubbled with my enthusiasm about the OAOG, all
the fun we routinely have during observing and told everyone that they could
never do any better than to find a similar, (they'll never find one quite
like ours though), group to join up with. It was a fabulous hour with many
very happy people all ready to go find books, charts, a really good group
and get themselves started!

The second panel was "The International Year of Astronomy". I shared
this panel with Tom and two others, (again regrettably, their names didn't
get recorded down on my documentation). Since this panel followed directly
on the heels of the first, we found ourselves with all the same people from
that lecture and we were joined by even more! It was awesome. Apparently we
were the only panels that came close to standing room only!

Many topics were covered and so I am not going to try and list them
because that would make almost a small book! Suffice it to say that we urged
everyone to search for public events near them and to join in on them all.
We also spoke about things like the scourge of light-polution and things
that individuals could do to help change it. It was a terrific hour, with
many questions from our very enthusiastic audience, (I know I keep using
that word, but that's the one that fits the best: sorry), and equally
energetic discussions. It was so energetic in fact, that when the hour was
up people didn't want to clear the room for the next presenters. I think you
can call that a success! ;-) I was honoured to there as a proud OAOGer and
I only wish that you could have been there too!

Cheers and clear skies all! Larry, the temporarily voiceless. :-)

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