The third act of Rosemead’s Summer Concert Series takes the stage on Friday, August 8, at 7pm, at Rosemead Park (Encinitas Ave, north of Mission). The band is 80 Degrees. Their website describes them as an 80's dance music band. Whoops, excuse me: They’re the ULTIMATE 80s Dance Party Band. :D
And, of course, because I require no other excuse to do sidewalk astronomy, I’ll be setting up a telescope or two in Rosemead Park, far enough from the stage that I don’t lose my hearing, but close enough to be part of this exciting event. Yep, this’ll be our second Rosemead Sidewalk Astronomy excursion. We’ll have a nice first quarter moon visible before dark. Once darkness falls, Jupiter will be well-place for observing all night long.
Various community non-profit groups will be selling food and drinks in the area to help raise money for their programs. So come on out, enjoy some free/cheap entertainment, and help support your local community groups!
Concert in the Park/Sidewalk
Somewhat trouble-plagued concert. 80-Degrees did a good job, with lots of familiar music. Unfortunately, the sound system cut out a couple of times. This wasn’t something that happened at the last two concerts, so I’m not sure why we had so much trouble tonight.
We also had a pretty light turnout for the concert. That’s probably because of counter-programming: A lot of folks stayed home to watch the opening ceremony for the Olympics. That always strikes me as kinda boring but it is one of those events that people want to share with the world, so there you go.
Despite the smaller number of concert goers, the number of people stopping by to look through our telescopes was way up. I suspect we had about 150-200 visits, although many of those were repeats who stopped by several times throughout the evening. That probably means about 80 unique visitors. It was a very good night for sidewalk astronomy, and I think the folks who came just for the concert also had fun.
Caroline and I had two telescope set up tonight. We had both on the moon early. Then, once it got dark enough to find Jupiter, I pointed the larger one to track the gas giant.
For some reason, my smaller, older mount wasn’t tracking. It started acting goofy on Tuesday, when I had it set up on the moon at the National Night Out event in Zapopan Park. I was hoping it was just a weak battery, but the problems continued tonight, with a fully-charged battery. So, once again, I kept it at low power and manually pushed it along to follow the moon.
I also got to hand out a few of my own "Rosemead Sidewalk Astronomers" flyer.
I was going to attach a copy here, but I guess I can't on a comment. Oh, well. I'll make another post, later. For now, I'll just note my strictly Sidewalk Astronomy website, http://rosemeadsidewalk.blogspot.com
I probably keep posting my astronomy events here on the SOC site, but I also wanted to create a non-political site for our sidewalk astronomy activities.
Tomorrow (Saturday, August 9), from around 7:30pm - 10:00pm, we’ll be joining our friends with Old Town Astronomers in Monrovia. A special treat: There’s a very bright flyby of the International Space Station scheduled for around 8:10pm. The sky will still be pretty bright, but the ISS should be bright enough to see.
Concert in the Park/Sidewalk
August 9 was another good night of sidewalk astronomy. More telescopes, so much less busy for me, but still a pretty steady stream of people. The "official" count I heard was about 160. Very nice International Space Station flyover. One of our members managed to track the space station for a while, and 3 or 4 of us got a peak at the ISS through a telescope. That was a real kick.
I felt busier and was set up for longer in Rosemead, so I'm still pretty sure we had about 180 visitors on Friday.
Not sure if I'll set up the telescope for the last Rosemead Concert. No moon to view, although Jupiter will continue to be well-placed for viewing.