Portable Solar Viewing

Greetings all…

Me and my Celestron C5+…doing a bit of solar viewing. I will post a couple of sketches made last Saturday and Sunday in the Solar System Observing forum.

Last weekend seven of us CVA'ers participated in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life at Reedley College SE of Fresno, CA. This is a 24-hr "walk-a-thon" fund raiser for cancer research. At least 200 people in about 24 teams participated. I won't go into all the details, but I did walk about 18 miles around the track in several one and two hour shifts and I didn't get enough sleep. My wife and 16-yr-old son did about the same.

Each participating team had a theme. Ours was "Searching the Stars for a Cure." We had two scopes set up for 24-hr viewing and a third for night only. It was mostly cloudy at night, but we did get to show Jupiter to a couple dozen people through holes in the clouds. Solar viewing was far more successful-at least 50 people stopped to take a look.

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Here's part of our group.

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Fred, that's awesome! We have been doing the ACS Relay for Life for 6 years now, with telescopes at the last 4. Our team is "Scope for Hope" and the scopes have become very popular. The team recruiter practically insists we continue the theme. Very cool!
Regards,
Christine

Here's my portable setup. Its a Televue Pronto with Coronado Solarmax 40 on a Celestron Nexstar 80GT mount. I leave it set up in my den and can be viewing in minutes. This pic is from Astronomy Day 2003, about an hour before the crowds came.

Don Wyman

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