Members of the Liverpool Astronomical Society Sidewalk Astronomers, (founded in 1998), will display several telescopes for viewing the Moon, Venus and Saturn.

This event is free, and is open to all members of the public.

EVENT REPORT - Dave Owen - The weather for this event was perfect; no clouds or rain. I arrived at about 19:45, with Geoff Regan and his 12 inch Dobsonian telescope. Steve Southern had arrived at about 19:10 and had already set up his 70mm Borg refractor and dealt with almost a dozen visitors.

By about 20:09 we had clocked up another 9 visitors and had set up the 12 inch to look at the 3 day old crescent Moon. Tom Green had set up his 15x70 binoculars on his home made binocular tripod and had also brought a chair, to make using the binoculars even more comfortable.

I decided to test my newly made independant altitude/azimuth system on Geoff's 12 inch scope. This consists of a carefully marked circle of hardboard, inner diameter 590mm and outer diameter 720mm. Each division of 1 degree is about 6.3mm. I call it independant as it is not physically attached to the telescope, like a conventional azimuth ring. Instead, it lies on the ground around the telescope.

The other parts of the system that justify the term independant, meaning easily transferable between telescopes, are a laser level and a hand held digital level. The laser level projects a very thin bright line accross the azimuth ring, allowing it to be read to a precision of about 0.25 degrees. The digital level can give a quick altitude estimate to about 0.1 degrees precision and about 0.3 degrees accuracy. The laser level is fixed to the front of the Dobsonian Rocker Box by a G clamp and a right angle bracket that has been bent to an angle of about 150 degrees. The laser level quickly attaches to the metal bracket, as it has a strong magnet on its base.

The final piece of this jigsaw was my mobile phone. This was running a planetarium program called Pocket Stars. This could give a constantly updated altitude and azimuth position for the Moon, Venus and Saturn.

Venus was an easy test, only about 3.5 degrees from the Moon. A more severe test was Saturn. This was about 40 degrees from the Moon and could not be seen in the finder telescope until 21:22, 12 munutes after sunset. Steve Southern had to wait until almost 22:00 to find Saturn with his Borg refractor. By then in could be easily seen with the naked eye in the rapidly darkening twilight.

Some Parking Warden's advised us to move our cars from the coach bay next to our telescopes. Within about 30 minutes, we were able to park in some recently vacated spaces near our telescopes.

One factor that certainly increased the number visitors we had, the final count was about 60, was a late evening event in Liverpool City Museum. The front entrance to the Museum was less than 100 yards from our observing site. This Museum crowd included a number of small children, who needed a ladder to look through the 12 inch scope.

We finally started to pack up at 22:00 and were up and away by 22:10.

Some photos of this event can be viewed at the following URL:

William Brown Street 19 May 2007 Photos

For more information contact:-

Dave Owen, LAS Sidewalk Astronomers - 07778 454524 dowenlas@yahoo.com

http://home.earthlink.net/~sidewalkastronomynight/

HOW TO FIND WILLIAM BROWN STREET - Maps from www.multimap.com

WILLIAM BROWN STREET - MAP 1

WILLIAM BROWN STREET - MAP 2

WILLIAM BROWN STREET - MAP 3

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WILLIAM BROWN STREET - MAP 5