World largest?...nah!

Well, April 4th has been and gone, and the public turnout for our 100HA event in little old Levin, New Zealand totally exceeded our expectations!  A world record it was not, but given our meagre population of around 20,000 a turnout of over 500 people was a dream come true for our small astronomy club.  Before the event our club had a membership of 65, but by the end of the night we had added another 100 members to our group!

Leading up to the event we did quite a bit of promotion - handing out flyers at shopping malls and main streets, radio advertisements (free community event bulletins), library displays, etc.  My company also donated a NZ$500 6" dobsonian telescope as a prize to try and attract as many punters as possible.  I was lucky(?) enough to be sat at the registration desk on the night and taking entries for the telescope draw and signing up new members, and I was absolutely swamped!  They just kept coming and coming all night (well, OK, until about 10pm anyway).

The weather, which had been quite uncooperative for the previous couple of weeks, could not have been better on the night - crystal clear skies and relatively warm, which I think contributed significantly to getting people out and about for us.  Unfortunately, being stuck at the registration desk, I didn't get to see through a telescope all night!  Ah well, such is life.  At least I know that collectively we brought a lot of joy and amazement to a large number of people, and that, after all, is what it was all about.

We had 2 main telescopes set up and gave everyone the opportunity to see Saturn through them and then register for the prize draw.  After that they were free to wander amongst the 10 or so other telescopes that were viewing other interesting objects.  Lots of oohs and ahhs could be heard all night.  There was also an amateur astronomer giving talks indoors and an information table where the public could ask questions and access information on astronomy.

Since then, I have immensely enjoyed reading about and seeing photos/videos of all the events around New Zealand and the rest of the world.  It has been an amazing experience, and I congratulate all of you who participated in this truly global event.  For those who are interested, I have attached a short video of our event below.  My apologies for the quality - the intro was shot using a handheld camera (a bit shaky!) and the remainder was shot from a static tripod (I didn't have any free time to move the camera around!).  Unfortunately, I also forgot to switch the camera over to "night" mode, so the footage is rather dark, but you can see how many people were there by the shadows moving against the background!  Hope you enjoy.

Cheers,

Mike