On 29 January 2020 ten members and 20 guests attended our second Telescope Help Shop. Following on from last year’s successful event, we had a waiting list and sufficient interest to run another one.
Our guests had brought along their telescope and we helped them with things such as setup, finder alignment, focusing and pointing. We had planned the day so that the Moon would be visible and although the weather was windy, we did get enough gaps between the clouds and showers to see the Moon through some of the scopes. As last year, we ran the event in the Gyle Hall at St. Thomas’s Church Costorphine, partly because of the grassy area to the side and views to the south over the Pentlands.
In feedback from our guests, overall they gave the event a 4.8/5.0 score!
We also gave a few short talks:
- How mounts work – altazimuth and equatorial
- Eyepieces – how they work and how to choose them
- Observer’s checklist
- ASE-24: Observing List for Beginners
You can view the presentations online.
This is part of our 4-Steps to the Stars events are aimed at helping people to get into astronomy, including online advice on buying a telescope, workshops to learn how to use a telescope, finding your way around the sky and then imaging it.