Since the clouds thinned out, and we had a nice crescent moon to punch through all the light pollution, we set up our gear - two Oberwerk binoculars (one of them mine - the ones on the left of the above image) and a Dob. We had about 15 people come through while I was out there, and possibly more while I was still inside sipping on my Belgian cream ale. Not only did we look at the moon, but we could just see the Orion Nebula as a brighter splotch surrounding the Trapezium, the tight grouping of four stars at the heart of the Orion Nebula.
We passed out information about the club to a lot of people, and some said that they had come just for the event! We may even get a few new club members as a result. I was talking to another girl about my age, and mentioned how there are only a few other young people like myself! She seemed surprised by this, but I also mentioned how astronomy tends to be a hobby of retirees. I'm pretty lucky to be able to carve time out to go out as much as I do. But with astronomy, you just pull out the telescope whenever you can, even if that's only a few times a year, or come to club events and borrow ours! We were out there for about 3-1/2 hours, and it was a good time.
