[Peyton-observing] Public Observing in 2015-16

[Jegunn]

That time of year again (actually, a little late), 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, notably from Munan Gong,
second-in-command), 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. We 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 have an organizational meeting the week of the 9th of November,
PROBABLY Monday the 9th. We will go over schedule and logistics, have
a training session on the telescope, and eat pizza (I will provide).

Please let me know if you are interested and want to come to the
meeting (or just want to come to the meeting) so I have a rough
headcount. Experienced folks from previous years are, of course,
more than welcome, and help keep me honest and remember things better
than I can by myself.

thanks much

--jim