Seasons Without Borders 3 in Parsonsfield, Maine, USA

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Jun 23

2010

by Joan Chamberlin

     On June 21st I set up my telescope in front of my house right on the street and invited all my neighbors to come celebrate the summer solstice by looking at the moon, Venus, and Saturn in my telescope.  Because it gets dark so late, I spent some time explaining how my telescope works, showing them how much sky they would be looking at, and letting them look through a card that shows field of view.  Then I showed them the telrad and explained how I find things in it.  I let one of the children use the telrad to find the moon.  She really got a kick out of finding things herself in the telescope.  We looked at the moon while it was still light out.  Then we watched for Venus to appear.  Everyone liked that too, but the biggest thrill was to come with Saturn and its moon Titan.

   The mosquitoes were very ferocious, so after looking at the planets and the moon for a while, we finished up the star party.  Below are some pictures from the event.  It was really fun showing the heavenly bodies to my neighbors and their kids.