[Peyton-observing] Peyton Public Observing, Fall 2022

[Rodrigo Córdova Rosado]

TLDR: Action Required, Come learn to point the telescope on stars, planets, and everything else; dinner will be provided! 

Hey everyone,

Thank you for signing up for Public Observing! Quick reminder, please fill out the google form to organize when folks are available this semester: https://forms.gle/6s52BcbWBr5QJjyD9.

As Sam mentioned, I’ll be teaching how to use the telescope on the sky now that it seems we have a weather window the next couple of days. In order for public observing nights to run smoothly, we’ll need at least one experienced observer, preferably two. If you’d like to be one please fill out this when2meet <https://www.when2meet.com/?16726144-WEXwn> promptly: https://www.when2meet.com/?16726144-WEXwn , to decide when over then next 3 days would be most convenient for the training/additional experience. 

Dinner will be provided!  

All the best,
Rodrigo 

> On Sep 6, 2022, at 10:11 PM, Samuel Yee <swyee at princeton.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> Thank you to those of you who came to our orientation meeting today! And if you couldn't make it, that's totally fine, a brief summary of our discussion follows.
> 
> I'm happy that we're planning to restart public observing this semester, after two years of not having it thanks to the pandemic. Thank you too for volunteering your time and suggestions!
> 
> If you'd like to help out, please fill up the following form to let me know your availability for this semester: https://forms.gle/6s52BcbWBr5QJjyD9 <https://forms.gle/6s52BcbWBr5QJjyD9>
> I will create a schedule and send it out to you, and will also confirm again a week before any date you're scheduled to help out.
> 
> Our public observing nights are typically held once a month on Wednesdays, beginning at 8:30 PM in the summer and 8 PM in the winter. We use the 12-inch telescope on the top floor of Peyton Hall for this. They typically run for around 2 hours, and attract a crowd of ~ 30 - 100 people, depending on the season. We draw a good mix of people, including kids with their parents, students, people who live in the area, etc. We typically schedule these nights close to the new moon, plus a "rain date" a week later in case of inclement weather. 
> 
> I only briefly showed everyone the telescope operations today, since the weather was being uncooperative. Rodrigo has agreed to help organize another night to show you how to use the telescope when the weather is better, if you're able to attend. In any case, each observing night will have at least one experienced observer, and we'll make sure to go over things with the observers before any public observing night.
> 
> We had a couple of great suggestions from today's meeting, and I'm hoping to implement the following:
> - Since it's hard to accommodate everyone in the telescope room at once, we're hoping to have some of the observers down in the auditorium, who can help answer questions from the public. They can also give a brief 5-minute short talk about something we will show in the sky that night, or something related to their research, accompanied by pretty pictures that can hopefully spark some questions/discussion.
> - We talked about having a "Halloween special", possibly with candy, and I've included those nights as possible dates in the poll.
> - Given the hiatus we had, I'm not sure how people will find out that we've restarted these events. People suggested placing an ad in the local newspaper, posters in the library, reaching out to local schools, and posting in the postdoc/grad student slack groups. Please email me if you'd like to help out with any of these! I will also reach out to Stephanie regarding posting it on the department's social media pages.
> - If you'd like to help out with improving the website <https://www.astro.princeton.edu/observatory/publicobserving.php>, etc. please let me know.
> 
> If you have any other comments or questions, please feel free to send me an email. Do forward this to other people in the department who might be interested but weren't at the meeting today, so they can subscribe to the mailing list too. 
> 
> Thanks again everyone!
> 
> Cheers,
> Sam Yee
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