July 2019 Public Star Party

Celebrate 50^th Anniversary Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Star Party at Tri County Tech, July 13, 2019

What: Star party (really, a “moon party”) to look at the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn, in commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing July 20, 1969

Who: BAS and BYA members and the public

Where: Tri County Tech, 6101 SE Nowata Rd, Bartlesville OK 74006. Party in grassy area at the south of the Tri County Tech campus

When: July 13, 2019, 9 pm-midnight

Who coordinated: Rick Buck made the decision to have a star party on this date to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. (Rick selected this date because the moon and Jupiter would be well positioned to the south following sunset and Saturn would rise shortly thereafter. A backup date could be July 20, but the moon would only be visible in the late night and early morning, which wouldn’t lend itself that well to a star party.) Denise coordinated with Darlene Young at Tri County Tech. John Grismore suggested bringing our new banner since it was going to be a public event; Rick Buck also planned to bring a folding table and chairs to greet our visitors with. Craig got our banner and other supplies from our new storage area. Derek also set up a shared Google photo album to post photos of the event!

Publicity used: We discussed possibly having an event at the July BAS meeting, and decided to make it a public event if Tri County said we could have an event on that date. Denise put advertising in the yellow sheet and a flyer at the library and at Jude’s. Derek emailed BAS and BYA members, and posted it on Facebook and Twitter. Mike Woods emailed the broader Club distribution list, as this would be a public party. We didn’t find out the event was “on” in time to put it in the newspaper. The Cable One public service announcements were not an option as there wasn’t enough room in the announcement form to put in the standard Tri County waiver statement, which Tri County requires in any publicity we use.

Number of people who attended: 30—14 BAS/BYA members and 16 guests

Number telescopes used: 5, with astrophotography. Also binoculars on tripod.

Other materials brought: Rick Buck brought a folding table, two nice red lanterns, and attached our new BAS banner to the table. He also brought a bunch of bottled water. We also brought our newly-assembled event handouts bin and supply bins. People also brought lawn chairs.

Materials of location site used: None

BAS expenditures: Use of Tri County Tech is free. We did make more copies of BAS summary sheet and the 6-page astronomy handout.

What we observed: Moon, Jupiter with four moons, Saturn with moon. John Grismore also located a couple of Messier objects. The bright Moon kept us from really looking at stars with the public.

Comments: Great summer weather…and it was nice to have more visitors than Club members attend! One (at least) of the visitors said they found out about the event from Facebook and several visitors mentioned the yellow sheet. A couple more said they found out about it from Club members. Several youth attended. It was great to have a proper table set up with our new banner, the red lanterns and handouts—that made our event look good to visitors. We also had at least one person man the table during the evening so that visitors could be greeted and directed to waiting telescopes! Two people filled out paper forms to be put on the mailing list. (It was good to have paper copies of the email signup form—at night would have been harder to scan a QR code!)