"Boardwalk" Astronomy at Hampton Beach

Sunday evening was warm and clear, Jupiter was rising nicely in fairly stable air and the moon crested the eastern horizon about 9pm. I grabbed the 80mm ED on the AT Voyager AZ mount and the binoviewers and headed down to the Hampton Beach boardwalk. It didn't take long at all before people were clustered around the scope, with good views of the eastern limb of the Moon just beginning to show signs of sunset with some nice craters becoming visible as their interiors fell into shadow. Jupiter showed four moons for a while, then three as one passed behind the planet for a while. An Indian family stayed the longest, maybe 45 minutes, and there were many visitors from Canada, in particular Montreal. People were a little worried that there might be a charge for looking through the scope - I think a sign would be reassuring in the future. "Sidewalk Astronomy - Free" or something like that. There was some discussion about poor Pluto losing its planetary status. One gentleman from Woburn had a scope and had helped design and implement a "walk through the Solar System" path around a lake, with granite monuments imbedded by the path at distances proportional to the scale of the Solar System. It was great when he said that Pluto would remain a planet in his "Solar System" because it was imbedded in 200 pounds of concrete!