1st Scarborough Scouts make start on astronomer badges

Friday 22nd February saw Andy Exton FRAS attend 1st Scarborough Scouts on Maple Drive in Scarborough to assist the scouts with their astronomer activity badges.

Unfortunately, as seems to be the norm, the night was clouded out along with a few flakes of snow so no observing of the night sky was possible.  Despite this, Andy was able to provide a talk on the stars, planets, satellites, nebulae, galaxies and more to a group of around 25 scouts covering some of the requirements of the badge.  In addition, some of the well known and easily recognisable constellations of the northern hemisphere were shown including Ursa Major that the scouts were shown how to use the pointers in the Plough to find the pole star Polaris.

After the talk, the scouts were able to look at both a reflector (Skywatcher Heritage 13oP) and a refractor (Celestron f/9 100ED) to compare the designs of the two telescopes along with learning about which were suitable for observing certain objects in the night sky.