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Cambrian Fest 2018

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For the ninth straight year, the SJAA hosted a booth, and lots of solar scopes, at San Jose’s District 9 community fair called Celebrate Cambrian. This event took place on Sunday, 26 August 2018.This area of San Jose is known as Cambrian Park, and features the Cambrian Community Center, which is situation on the grounds of the former Camden High School campus. SJAA volunteers maintain a presence at this annual event to contribute back to the community in which our organization has its basecamp at Houge Park.

As a member of this local community, I have spearheaded all of SJAA’s participation in the event. It’s essentially a solar viewing event, so Wolf Witt, our new leader of the Solar Program, again stepped up to help with the event. We showcased three solar scopes, the club’s flagship Lunt 100mm H-alpha scope, a recently donated Lunt 80mm, and Wolf’s personal Celestron. The 80mm rig was outfitted with a Mallincam camera which was wired to an outdoor-rated flat panel display to more easily show visitors what they will see in the eyepiece of the other two scopes.  And finally, we had Wolf’s Lunt 60 on his Celestron NexStar mount.

The sun helped us by hosting a couple of interesting features. There was a fairly large prominence at the four o’clock position which showed up nicely on the monitor and in the eyepiece. The sun also displayed a nice filament across the face of its disk, again easily spotted in the scopes and through the camera.  One of the posters of the sun that we had out there coincidentally

mimicked what we could see in the eyepiece, with the prominence at the 4 o’clock position and the location of the filament.  Talk about cooperation!

We had a great group of volunteers manning the scopes and the booth. Our new social media manager, Jessica Johnson (who recently got SJAA on Instagram!), was doing a great job guiding the visitors through the scopes.

We had another young lady helping all day, a high school student who is in the process of forming a new astronomy club at her school.  We had two more high school students manning the booth and helping kids and their parents learn about ultraviolet light by making bracelets out of UV-sensitive beads.  The beads were a hit, with oohs and ahhs all around once the beads quickly developed color when exposed to sunlight!

Bill Gottlieb also participated, helping explain aspects of what we were viewing.  SJAA President Swami Nigam also paid a visit to ensure things were running smoothly.

Thanks to our volunteers who gave up most of their Sunday to help bring astronomy to the general public. We’ll be out there again next year!

Posted in Blog, Recap, Solar

Recap – Swap Meet 2015

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crowded hall

image credit Glenn Newell

The SJAA Swap Meet for 2015 was a resounding success! There were lots of people who came out to browse, buy and sell, with old friends meeting up for the first time in a long while.

Though the event was scheduled to start at 11AM, there were people showing up even before then, setting up their wares, and others who came early to snag the good deals on pieces and parts of astronomy gear they needed. It was quite evident that this event was long anticipated. And just as it started early, it also ended early. Advertised to shut down at 4pm, the swap meet really began winding down at about 2pm, with people having socialized enough, sorting through the gear plenty enough times, and feeling satisfied that everything, and everyone, who was going to show up had already done so. The hall was cleaned out and cleaned up by 2:30.

Throughout the year, the SJAA receives donations of astronomy gear, usually sets of full telescope rigs with all the accessories. These donations are evaluated to determine if there is a place for it in a club program, such as the loaner telescope program. If there is no suitable place for it, then it’s value on the secondary market is determined, and finally gets listed for sale at either the annual swap meeting or auction. At this year’s swap meet, the club was able to find new homes for quite a number of gently and otherwise used scopes and accessories. Including direct sales and donations of sales proceeds from participants, the SJAA netted about $2300 at the end of the day.

The club very much appreciates all donations, and the board of directors also very much appreciates the time and effort of the volunteers that make these events happen, including the prep work of receiving donations, evaluating them, and finally finding them new homes. The community of amateur astronomy enthusiasts makes it all work.

We look forward to the next swap meet and seeing faces that sometimes become less and less frequent in the hall at Houge or on the hills in the dark of a new moon. We hope we can continue to encourage people to get out, to observe, and to keep this wonderful community and hobby going.

If you attended the swap meet and have any feedback for the organizers, please use the Feedback link on the sjaa website. Even if you didn’t attend but want to share an idea or any thoughts, please send it via the same means.

Posted in Recap