Nice report, Larry. I'm looking forward to hearing your stories at the next
Gabfest. Hope your voice gets better soon.

Rob.L.

--- In OAOG@yahoogroups.com, "Larry Stewart" <larrys@...> wrote:
>
> 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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>