StarTalkResearch


http://www.borregonightskytours.com/questions.htm

https://perthobservatory.com.au/shop/night-tours/night-sky-tours

https://www.grandcanyondeals.com/tour-company/sedona-star-gazing-tour/

https://www.stargazingjoshuatree.com/

I have been doing small events for one or two families for over a year at an AirBNB in the hills above Ojai. For these events I bring a 10-inch reflecting telescope, a powerful hand-held green laser, a pair of 15x astronomical binoculars on a tripod, and multiple pairs of smaller 7-10x astronomical binoculars. During the event I usually cover the following topics:

- What we can see in the sky with just our eyes: stars, constellations, planets and the Moon, their origin stories, myths and legends, and their motions. This includes how to use binoculars, including adjustment, focus and star-hopping.
- How to set up and operate the telescope, including parts, how they work together, locating targets and focusing on them.
- A tour of the "deep sky", objects too faint to be seen without a telescope: nebulas, open clusters, globular clusters, and galaxies.

The dates you mentioned (Oct 7-9) are nights with a bright Moon in the early evening, so some of these targets will be washed out by the moonlight. This means we will focus more heavily on the first half of the talk. I like to run a very interactive event, being responsive to questions and building off of what people already know about the night sky. This means that each talk is personalized to what the attendees are interested in.

The event runs a guaranteed 1.5 hours, with extra time possible depending on how the night is progressing.