The forecast was full cloud for days before, but as the date approached, it got better and better till on the night before it was for clear sky throughout, lucky us.
We went down an hour early to set up the kit, my 10" LXD55, Dave Hardware's newly acquired 6" Skywatcher Refractor, the 8" Celestron, and the big binoculars, Dave had also brought his binoculars on a parallogram mount, quite a good armoury of instruments. All set up on a tiled circular area, we returned to the main building for a cup of cheer and some biscuits the Potteric Carr crew had baked, star cakes and constellation cakes etc.
We'd planned a quick gathering outside to watch the ISS make a pass overhead past the Moon and Jupiter at 5 mins after the advertised start time of 7pm.
Out we all went -- to be greeted by thick cloud, with just occasional clear patches, very occasional too. We all stood and hoped till I called it off and we started to go back inside, when Dave shouted "There it is", and it appeared for what must have been 2 secs. But we all looked up and saw it before it disappeared into cloud again. That set the pattern for the rest of the evening, full cloud with just an occasional peep of the Moon and one by Jupiter all of no more than a couple of seconds.
There were some 40 members of the public, all good average sensible looking citizens, aged from 25 to 65, with a three small children. We also had two members of the Doncaster Movie Makers there to take videos of our activities, on a project of theirs to produce a 10min promotional video, of our activities for us. There were about 8 of the Potteric Carr staff there too and our members were, Lesley and Dave, Sandra, Peter, Mark, Vic, Phil, Paul, Dennis and Rhys.
Into the sit down and listen section, to be followed by the get outside and look through the telescopes, to be followed finally by the find and follow the NEO 2012DA14 that was to buzz Earth that night and be visible at 8:50pm as it rises above our eastern horizon.
After the sit and listen 45mins., we all went out to the telescopes, along a long made up path to the butterfly area, don't step off or you're in mud, to the telescopes. Though there was nothing to see in the sky, everyone was very busy talking and asking questions and looking at the kit, almost as though the sky wasn't important and we'd all come down for a talk among ourselves. Our mainstay during this was all our members who didn't have a telescope to manage. They listened to the visitors and talked to them, invaluable contribution.
An enjoyable evening, lots of discussion, what does this do, how does that work etc. Can I look through at something, mostly the children asking, and only the lights of the nearby buildings to see, can you take photographs through telescopes etc. Throughout, the DMM couple, Nigel Burkinshaw and another, were taking videos of what was going on.
Shame about the sky, but it was, all in all, a good evening and I think the visitors enjoyed it well enough to have been worth it.
People began drifting away from about 8:30pm and we finally closed down and had packed up by 9:30. Still the cloudy sky, so those of us last out, Vic, Dave and Lesley, Peter and Sandra, trapped by a truck and trailer carrying cars, that had stopped at the end of the lane we were parked in, went off to a nearby pub for a wind down, and as expected, the sky had cleared when we got out and went home.
Brian