[Peyton-observing] Public Observing for 2014-15

[Jegunn]

That time of year again, and am making my annual call for volunteers to 
help with public observing. We have a 12-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain 
telescope on the roof and open it to the community once a month for 
regular public observing (see the 'Monthly Observing Open House' link off 
the astro.princeton.edu website -- many thanks to Steve Bickerton for 
writing this site).  The sky here is pretty bright, but you can still see 
enough bright star clusters, nearby galaxies, planets, emission nebulae, 
and colorful visual binaries to make an interesting evening, and they are 
enthusiastically received by the visitors.  This is an excellent 
opportunity for you to meet and talk to a public quite interested in what 
we do.

I run this enterprise (with a lot of help), but the last few years we
have had a wonderful group of volunteers -- undergraduates, graduate
students, postdocs, and research staff -- who ran most of the sessions.
We will train new folks in the use of the telescope, which is a modern
machine which has built-in catalogs and after some simple initial setup
will point to objects it knows about (many more than can be seen under
Megalopolis skies) at the operator's bidding.

There are in addition to the regular public sessions various special
requests from scout groups, classes, clubs, etc, perhaps another 10
sessions during the year. I will call for volunteers for these on an
ad hoc basis.

Please let me know if you are interested, and if you are please have a
serious look at the public webpage and the more technical ones
(www.astro.princeton.edu/observatory--there is also a link off the public
page) which will tell you quite a bit about the sessions and the 
equipment.

We will schedule an organizational/training meeting (with pizza) once I
get a feel for how many people we will have. It will probably be the week
of the 22nd...classes are just starting next week and the undergrads just
arriving, and I am away the week following.

thanks much

--jim