So this is why we were here at Robert Moses State Park, so show the Moon and Saturn to people who came bringing food for Long Island Cares food bank. Bringing some non-perishable food as a donation, allowed you to look through our telescopes. The wonderful thing is that at the end of the evening there were 800 pounds of food in the truck that will be in the warehouse this morning. Here one of our members is setting up her telescope in daylight so she will be ready when it gets dark.
As it got darker, this is all of the amateur astronomers from both ASLI and also from the Amature Observers Society of New York. We had a great turnout of members from both clubs with not only telescopes, but TV screens that were set up to show visitors some of the work that amatures have done in terms of imaging some distant objects. Some of their photographs look like they were taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, that's how good their images are.
Here are both members and visitors viewing a TV screen in the middle of the parking lot, showing amateur made photographs of deep space objects. I never did figure out where the power came from!
All kinds of things were set up here, automated telescopes that would display images on screens and screens showing photographs done by amateur astrophotography in other places at other times.
This is one amateur and his antique telescope, made at the turn of the 20th century. He is about to show the moon to the person at left. Unfortunately once visitors started arriving, I was busy non-stop showing visitors both the Moon and Saturn and I never got to walk around and see visitors looking through the telescopes of other amateurs. All in all, it was an astounding evening and so many people were astounded to see both the Moon and Saturn for the very first time - they have never in their lives ever looked through a telescope at the night sky!
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