Resist the urge to take flash pictures. We can accommodate photos during the setup period, prior to full darkness, and you will get better pictures.
Bring warm clothes. A sweater or jacket, as the air cools quickly after dark, even after a warm day.
Don’t carry food and drinks around the scopes. Spills are a problem for the scopes and also for those around them — it’s no fun walking around in sticky shoes.
Be careful not to touch the telescopes. Especially the eyepiece where you look in. They move very easily and will lose our target. Worse, you may lose your balance! Just hang onto the stepladder with both hands.
Toddlers are too young to understand how to look into telescopes, nor can they make sense of what’s going on. When lifted, their natural tendency is to grab onto whatever is available, and that’s sure to be the telescope. Bring them again in a year or two, when they are old enough to climb the ladder without help.
Make your rounds. After we show the first group of objects, we’ll move the scopes to additional objects. So, after making the rounds of the telescopes, go back again, as we may have something new. We also take requests. Unfortunately, Pluto is too faint to be seen in a city, even with a large telescope.
School star parties are not open to the public. Though school grounds are open during these star parties, it is the school, not SJAA, that is the host. Therefore, information on these pages is not an invitation for non-students to come to the school, even though it is unlikely that anyone would object.