Beginning Astronomy Class

By Bob Leavitt

Twenty-three enthusiastic students signed up for PAC’s Beginning Astronomy Class, which was held in April 2006. We had a mixture of adults, parents with children, and a couple of kids who took the class on their own. The class met on four Wednesday evenings from 7:00 – 9:30 PM.

Classroom sessions covered many phases of astronomy, including planets, the sun, asteroids, comets, stars, deep sky objects, telescope design, constellations, and finding your way around the night sky. Observing sessions taught the basics of sky charts, telescope setup, finderscope alignment, and finding objects using the scopes.



We were lucky in that observing conditions were fairly good on each of the nights, though we had to contend with light pollution and the moon on two of the nights. A special solar observing session was held at 5:00 pm on the 3rd evening. Due to high winds and clouds we decided to repeat the session on the last evening. On the last evening Dave and Joey Churilla set up their web cam to do some imaging of Saturn. This was well received by the class and the images turned out nicely. 

Many students commented that they had a good time and learned a lot in the class. Those of us teaching the class had a lot of fun as well. The instructors included Dave Churilla, Joey Churilla, Dan Delzell,