Sidewalk Marathon in Erding

Yesterday (Sunday 25 April), At 14:00, a joined exhibition with the local fine art club on the topic "the Tower of Babel" officially started our Star party. 2 hours later, EurAstro's President Jean-Luc Dighaye kicked of an incredible Astronomy Marathon in Erding, Germany. At around 16:00, his Coronado started duty in the middle of the "Schranneplatz", intiating a queue of people waiting in the line which disappeared only 8 hours later as the exhausted organizers collapsed under the demand! The twilight inevitably showed the EurAstro' device be replaced by standard telescopes, first to look at the moon, and later Saturn with its moons, Mars and the Beehive cluster.  8 Hours of passers by, having an estimated average 30 seconds look in one of the 4 scopes, the math are incredible, even considering the restrictions (some looked several time in several scopes, full deployment was around 18:00). Organizers estimate that 1500 persons, mostly astronomy novice, enjoyed the beauty of the universe. A definitive driver for the success was a parallel running music festival, but the enlightment through astronomy was definitely a point of culmination!

The event was organized by the Erding Sidewalk Astronomers (in short ESA), This time the team was comprised of Annemarie Sartini, who designed the logo and connected us to the fine art people, Michael Eichelmann who made the hand overs and the posters, Markus Jaksch who managed to serve 2 telescopes, Christophe Claude who ran overall trying to give unity to the chaos and guest star Jean-Luc Dighaye, ESA Godfather and solar starter"