Success!

The rough headcount for the Open House was about 9,000 visitors. This was the first one I had worked (there hadn’t been one of these since 2001) and the expectation from the earlier events was that we could get “a few thousand” people, so I’d have to say that we exceeded expectations. The weather was absolutely gorgeous for early April — mid 60s and literally no clouds. There was some wind early in the afternoon, but even that minor annoyance died down.

We got a lot of traffic at the geocaching table. A fellow geocacher helped out (and a few others came to visit and nab the “puzzle” geocache located at the Observatory); we chatted with people and explained the activity to the adults. For the kids, it was more interactive — I handed them a GPS receiver and walked them through the cache finds: a fake rock and a film container, with log books in them. The areas open to the public weren’t conducive to larger caches, and there was no budget for trade items (or give-aways, in this case). But with the response we got from this event, maybe there will be an opportunity for a more elaborate activity next year.

I didn’t get a chance to check out the other presentations (though I had seen several of the posters; a network issue prevented several people from “seeing” our plotter, so they sent me files and had me print them) I know the lines were long for the “big” telescopes, and there were more than a dozen amateur astronomers who set up scopes (some more than one) for viewing. The sun (sans spots) during the day, and then whatever was up at night. I arrived at 1 for some setup work and left around 9, which is when they were going to close the gates, and there was still a considerable line of people waiting to get in. Not sure if they stayed open later than the planned 10 PM. It would have been disappointing to close down before everyone got a chance to look through a few telescopes, but security makes the call on things like that.

The best part about all of this was the kids. You could tell that some had been dragged there, but for the most part they were very engaged and enthusiastic. The ones who did the geocache finds were, and I heard some very positive, spontaneous comments from them in the area where the telescopes were set up. When I was returning some GPS receivers to Geoff, the PAO, the youngster stepping down from the telescope shouted out a very sincere, “I saw the MOON!” That’s worth the price of admission right there.

Here’s the view of the lawn where the small telescopes were set up.

Things got busier as it got dark, but flash photography tends to annoy people who want their eyes to be dark-adjusted, so I don’t have any pictures.