Last night I was with a Boy Scout troop at Simpson Springs and had the same occur. I showed them Venus, explaining it was a crescent (and how important this was historically, cited as Galileo as evidence for the Copernican system). After several were confused, and one insisted he couldn't see Venus, but could see the moon pretty well, I said "That's Venus. I'll show you the moon." I did so at 120x (the same power I had been using) and they gasped and needed no more convincing. It was lovely. Chalk up another for the SLAS loner scope program... Jim ---- Jim Cobb james@cobb.name On Apr 24, 2004, at 2:52 AM, Patrick Wiggins wrote:
Ann House and I did a lecture and star party in Richfield tonight and one fun aspect of the star party was convincing people who were looking at Venus through the scope that they really were looking at Venus. Many though it was a tiny view of the Moon.
Patrick
Chuck Hards wrote:
Note that the moon and Venus have identical phases tonight. Both fit in the same wide-field bino FOV, a beautiful sight. And there is a much-diminished Mars, seemingly just below the moon, yet actually on the far side of the sun. I'm going back out in the yard, to the parallelogram...r
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