Viewing Mars at the Winfield Winery

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Aug 06

2018

by Jerelyn Ramirez

We had 6 club members and 6 telescopes available for 46 visitors to view all the naked eye planets including Mars. What a plesent surprise, they were expecting 14 guests and 46 showed up. We made available for the guests an outreach program to get them excited about what we were going to show them. We helped them understand where the planets are and what planets can be seen this night. We also explored the movements of the planets, when closer to the Sun the inner planets travel faster than the outer planets. We shared with them why we can't see color at night and why the objects don't look like a picture in a magizine, and how to use averted vision. There were several other lessons we shared with the public. After I said, "let's go look at stuff in the telescope", I was surprised how many stayed behind to ask more questions to learn more about space. I was more than happy to go over more information with them.
We had two new club members join the club a couple months ago and they wanted to volunteer for this event. Nethier had a telescope, I told them not to worry, they could use mine. My husband and I brought two telescopes for them to use, we coached them on how to set it up and use them. We let them operate the telescopes for the public. They did very well. My husband and I had so much fun teaching them.