Public Star Party

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Jun 24

2018

by Roger Hambleton

I hosted a star party for the public on June 1st, 2018 for people in my community in Dubai, UAE.

Like with any public event in Dubai, it was very diverse, and roughly 30 people showed up!

Since we're in the city, we focused on planetary & lunar observations. Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars (coming up late) were more than enough to make people say "WOW!".

Being Ramadan, the event started later in the evening (10pm), most people stayed about 30 minutes or so to observe Jupiter, Saturn, The Moon, and some brighter stars (like Arcturus, Antares, and Vega) - we discussed various topics, and I answered questions (within my abilities to answer them).

Some were out to impress with their knowledge, others were empty recepticles - but Saturn & Jupter did the job on each and every one of them!

As happens during these events, there was a 14 year old boy (Ali) who was totally fascinated with the topic, and he stayed with me from 10pm till Mars became decently visible at about 1:30am.

I didn't take any photos of us as a group (I was really too excited to show the people all I could), but the feedback I received on Facebook was very positive. I will definitely repeat this after the summer.

-Roger Hambleton