What a response from students! Yes, the outreach event at Adarsha School was very responsive and interactive.
As planned the session started at 7:30 pm, Over 50+ students waiting for my arrival and eager to see objects thro' the telescope. Since we had hardly 30 min before the first quarter moon would set, without wasting time the telescope was set to watch moon.
Moon through 25 mm eyepiece covered full field of view. Students could identify the craters on moon and their sizes. Inverted moon image caught couple of student's eyes. Henceforth the discussion started.
While every one was peeping thro the telescope pointed to Moon, on the other side Pavan was busy explaining the constellations and stars in the night sky, the enthuse of the students gave life to the show. Murthy and Mohan were organising the event and looking after the crowd and controlling the students.
As soon as moon set, I took over the explanation session and explained the students about directions, stars, constellations, clusters types, star colours, size, distance, nebulas, stars twinkling effect, motion of stars across the sky, and so on. After some explanation to the students, I pointed the telescope to planet Mars, and students were clearly able to identify the colour and shape of Mars.
Then a short session on BAS and its activities were explained to the students, continued with measurement of angles using fingers and fist was explained, few exercise done and all students were able to measure few star's angle from a given star/position.
Finally the session was concluded and everyone left, with the taste of astronomy in their mind. A short program to motivate students towards astronomy was well done.
After a long, we had a good interaction from students and outreach session :)
Thanks to Pavan, Vijay, Murthy and Mohan. Thanks to Adarsha School for providing us an opportunity.
Some of the images of the event are shared @ http://www.bas.org.in/Home/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=1072