We had another great AOW at Randle High School in Richmond on Thursday night October 9th. At high schools, the number of attendees is usually smaller but the level of interest is higher and conversions more in depth.
We had a group of around 30 enthusiastic students and parents who were treated to Don Cooper’s Apollo 11 and 13 talk. I have attended Don’s presentation many times and it still amazes me what he has seen and done. Don developed the guidance calculations in the 1960s for the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo Moon missions. We are so fortunate to have a living legend in our ranks.
Outside on the telescopes we had Steve Clayworth, Hari Rao, and John Spencer who treated the students to views of Saturn and Hari had his SeeStar imaging the Lagoon Nebula. However, the students were more interested in looking through his six inch Newtonian telescope.
John brought out his home made Newtonian and Steve his awesome Questar. We also had new member Hareesh Janakiraman attend to assist. It is always great to meet new members and I really appreciated Hareesh coming out to help; he had just returned from India.
I encourage more new members to attend FBAC events and club meetings.
This event was organized by Emerzen Echaves who is also an FBAC member and teaches at Randle High School. As a nice touch, Emerzen had students introduce Don before his presentation.
Emerzen also had several of the school’s scopes setup for students to use including one FBAC had donated to the school. After Don’s presentation I was able to teach some students on how to align the finder scope on one of their telescopes using a distant parking lot light pole and then, once aligned, find Saturn.
It was a great night, and I want to thank Emerzen for hosting and all the FBAC volunteers who attended the event.
Our next AOW event is November 7th back at the Robert Shaw STEAM center in Katy. A bit of a drive for some but oh so worth it.
