The observatory in France is now 'finished' (although are they really ever?). I am very pleased and privileged to be able to observe, for a while, from such wonderful dark skies in a rural setting; it certainly beats the  suburbs of Sheffield.  I was also pleasantly surprised to see the interest it generated in the local community (news travels fast in a village) and  explained why I wore daft T-shirts with astronomy themes. I therefore offered to run some ‘outreach’ showing some of my favourite deep sky objects.

Rather than setting up a visual rig on which I would waste time struggling to find things, teach people  about averted vision, manage expectations etc., I settled on a ‘semi-live’ imaging format which used my main mount and short (60s) exposures on a C11. I then projected these images onto a screen just outside the obsy. The pointing on the mount is reasonably good, and occasional plate solving and syncing took care of any residual errors; little time was therefore  wasted between targets.

Small groups of around four people seem to work well with this format. Sun loungers in front of the screen and a few snacks seem to go down well…We saw several deep sky objects (e.g M13, M57, M27, M31, M101…) and, last time, Saturn was peeping over the trees (see photo).

I have run a couple of these sessions so far but still have  a good list of interested people to get to yet. Fortunately my wife is a fluent French speaker so if any translations are required we should be OK!