OTTERSPOOL EVENT 13th OCTOBER 2000

The Otterspool Sidewalk event on Fri 13 Oct 2000 was very well attended. The Liverpool Parks Ranger, Paul Sutter, estimated that there were 49 visitors. Geoff Regan did two slideshows indoors while there were five telescopes outside that were able to give views of the almost full Moonas well as Jupiter and Saturn. John Naylor, the first to arrive, had brought his 8 inch Donsonian reflector. Jim Stacey had recently upgraded from a Tal 4.5 inch reflector to an 8 inch with a Go-To facility. Unfortunately, there was a bit too much cloud to get the Go To aligned quickly. Eventually, Jim was able to get a fix on the Moon and Jupiter. Steve Southern assembled his ETX 90 mm scope, which also sported a Go To facility.

Ed Message looked after my 6 inch f4 Dobsonian reflector, which took a lot longer to transport from the car park than it did to set up and start using. While Ed catered for those wanting to look at the Moon, I attempted the slow and mysterious process of assembling the LAS 6.5 inch f10 Dobsonian reflector. Problem number one: We should really make sure that the various components are clearly marked in a way that is easy to see at night. After all, a telescope is not always assembled in a brightly lit room! A first look down the eyepiece tube revealed a major misalignment. After trying to adjust the orientation of both telescope mirrors I tried to think a little bit. Maybe the tube poles should be swapped around. It was then that I saw the labels that confirmed that I had indeed made this mistake. So, a few minutes later, with the poles swapped over, we had a usable telescope. Still very poorly aligned, but our resident expert at Telescope collimation was inside the Visitors' Centre giving two consecutive slide shows.

The weather was not perfect,  but we managed to see a lot more than we saw at the last Sidewalk event in September.

Please contact myself or Geoff Regan Dave Owen dowenlas@yahoo.com