[sac-forum] Girl Scout Encampment

Well it was another successful encampment, despite Meteroa's best efforts to
the contrary. Jimmy Ray, Andrew Goodwin, Dick Harshaw and I left Friday
afternoon and as we drove through Prescott Valley the prospects looked dim
as we drove through a thunderstorm.

Friday night's plan was to regale with tales of star lore around the
campfire. Fortunately the rain stopped and the Skies cleared enough that we
were able to tell the epic saga of Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus and
Andromeda. I probably shouldn't have been, but I was surprised at how much
of the story was familiar to the girls.  After the Fire was out, we stayed
out in the sport field and gave the girls a better look at the characters of
the stories they just head (The campfire area was kind of "Sky restricted"
by the trees).

Saturday we had pretty much to ourselves as the astronomy program was
schedules for after dinner and then observing. Jimmy had brought his PST and
Chris Hanrahan joined us about 1030 and set his PST up  as well. The girls
would pass by on the way to their next activity and we'd show them the sun.
No sunspots but we were treated to some very nice solar flares. The views
got lotsa of "WOWS". As the afternoon pressed on the clouds again made their
presence known and we did have another thunderstorm (Looks like those who
went to the Antennas made the right choice). After dinner the girls made
Planispheres and then we set up our scopes (At least the ones that had a
mount and un-fried electronics). The night wasn't that good, but we were
able to shoot sucker holes and get all the girls some time at the eyepiece,
so the objectives were met. 

As before the Scout leaders and Camp Moms were all very appreciative of our
efforts and in fact I think we'll have a few more inquiries from them in the
future. The accommodations were again nice if not a bit rustic, with the
exception of "The Daddy Long Legs incident".   

All in all we all had fun and more importantly, the girls had fun.

Now to begin work on getting some content on the website.

Clear Skies

Rick Tejera
Editor SACnews,
Public Outreach Coordinator
Saguaro Astronomy Club
Phoenix, Arizona
www.saguaroastro.org <http://www.saguaroastro.org/> 
saguaroastro@xxxxxxx

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