Funniest Public Outreach Stories

[Mike]

OK I have a ton of them and I know you do to. I'll bet James as a bunch. A couple of years ago we were doing a solar viewing for the public at a state park. An elderly woman wanted to see the proms through my H alpha scope. As she was trying to see them she apparently lost her balance. In order to stop her fall she reached for the mount tripod and her and all my equipment was heading for the ground. Grab her or grab my rig? Well of course I grabbed her. Fortunately, my buddy was setup very close, saw what was happening and caught my rig at just a few inches from hitting the ground.

After a few others post I might tell you about the private showing we did for the "elite people" although heavily intoxicated at the Hilton Hotel in Cincinnati some years back.

[bn1777]

Out reach , I love doing it as well Mike .

One story that sticks with me is a young man coming up to me one night and said , nice scope is this yours , it was my 6 inch Chromocorr;d Saxon refractor , in NZ .

Anyway he said , my parents got me one like this ,, not like those others ( dobs and CAT;s ) and can I have a look thru it ? hell yes young fella , go for it .
The scope was on the 1st quarter moon at about 80x and giving a view that only a refractor can , he gasped , said WOAW!! this is much better than mine !! .
Later on that night I spoke to his parents and asked if they can bring themselves and the scope along next month ? , yes they said .

Fast forward one month .

They arrived with the scope in its box and I said to the young fella , just set it up like you do at home ( I wanted to see how he did the set up ) , so away he went and I watched him doing his set up and his parents said he has had it out every night since he got it , 2 months and soon enough the scope was set up and looking good , he knew what he was doing here , even pointing south , nice .

I asked him to put in an eyepiece and point it to the moon ,, all done very well but he still said its not as good as yours , well it was a 70mm f11 celestron on EQ2 refractor , nice little scope .
He was at the eyepiece for quite a while muttering , focusing , muttering ,, focusing then stood up and said this is as good as it gets , I was starting to think the scope was a dud .
Can I have a look now ? , 'yes , yes please do'.

Putting my eye to the eyepiece , the supplied 20mm I was horrified ! to say the least all I saw was a white glow WTF ?? this is BAD ! .

A closer look reveiled that the plastic top 1/2 of the bolt case was still on the top of the eyepiece , I removed it refocused stood back and said have a look now ,, Man the yelp and 'Mum Dad come look !' were worth more than any thing in the world , as I said I love out reach .
The sellers of this scope had not told them that it had to be removed .

Brian.