On Wed., June 24th, I took my first-ever trip to Star Island in the Isles of Shoals aboard the M/V Uncle Oscar out of Rye Harbor to present an evening talk on Astronomy to the attendees (called "conferees") at the 2009 Natural History Conference being held at the Oceanic Hotel on Star. This group of adult Natural History devotees has been gathering for a week of lectures, workshops, reading, writing and exploring the island every summer for more than thirty years, and some have attended every conference.
I started by showing the first 5 minutes of the famous Charles & Ray Eames film "Powers of 10" which I'm sure most of you have seen. It pulls the camera back by 10 times the previous distance each 10 seconds, and you go from a picnic on the short of Lake Michigan to out beyond the Virgo Galaxy cluster in about 5 minutes.
From there I talked about the local neighborhood, Moon and Solar System, what some of the "stars that aren't stars" might be (clusters, binaries, nebulae, etc.), the Cassini mission including the Huygens descent movies (always a big hit), why the moon shows phases, and a few other things before wrapping it up some highlights from Saturn. We tried to do some observing but were completely shut in by clouds, so we had to settle for eating ice cream and talking.
The high point of the trip for me was getting to meet an elderly conferee who, in the 1960s, worked at MIT packaging electronics for the Apollo moon missions. Her hands were the last human hands to touch some of the equipment before it went to the moon. I thanked her on behalf of all of us for that dedicated work, and after shaking her hand I am now just one handshake away from touching the original Apollo spacecraft.
A gentleman named Al Doolittle, who had been a member of their conference for many years before passing away, used to bring a home-made 8" dob to every conference. His wife donated it to Star Island, and it now resides in the Natural History Lab building, along with a Bausch & Lomb 8" f/10 SCT (like a Criterion) with wedge and 110V motor drive, and a 3" refractor by Celestron on an alt-az mount with wooden legs. There are 4 eyepieces as well. The equipment is available for anyone to use, just check with the staff during the day if you ever overnight on the island. I left brochures and handouts for NHAS along with documents with links to our website and other web information.
