I’m proud to announce that the Atlanta Skeptics raised $3,000 for the American Cancer Society with our Star Party event!
The evening was fantastic. Many thanks to Chris DePree and all the staff at the Bradley Observatory, who let us use the space.
The Bradley Observatory (84 17 38.98 W, 33 45 54.84 N) is an astronomical teaching and research facility located on the campus of Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. The Observatory, named in honor of William C. and Sarah Hall Bradley, contains the 70-seat Delafield Planetarium and a 100-seat capacity lecture hall.
On the day of the event, the skies were clear. My worries that we’d have clouds or worse yet, rain, began to disappear. People started arriving around 7 p.m. and we had food and drinks and mingling very soon after! We started the program with a tribute to Jeff Medkeff, astronomy videos from some of the folks who were not able to be there and talks by Pamela Gay and Phil Plait. We were also lucky enough to have Karen Medkeff, Jeff’s wife, attend the event and speak as part of the tribute to Jeff.
Pamela and Phil were both, as always, entertaining and interesting. We had great discussion and question and answer sessions. But once that was done, it was time to get down to the very serious business of star gazing.
We walked outside, and to my horror, it had clouded over! Undaunted, we set up in the pavilion outside the observatory. Many thanks to the folks from the Atlanta Astronomy club who brought telescopes and helped people observe. Sure enough, after a little while, the clouds cleared and we were able to do some actual stargazing.
Visibility was limited because of the full moon. But we were able to see the moon and Jupiter and its moons. We had also purchased several Galileoscopes and pre-built them so people could purchase them and go outside and look through them immediately. And of course, we had several astronomers around to help people use the scopes.
The folks at the Bradley Observatory also had students available to show off the Beck Telescope, a 30-inch reflector in the facility. This 1930 vintage Cassegrain has a Warner & Swasey mounting with optical elements by J.W. Fecker. It was completely refurbished and modified for its installation in 1950 by the Perkin-Elmer Corporation. The telescope tracking control system was modernized and upgraded during the summer of 1998, and the mirrors were refinished during the renovations in 2000.
Overall, the event was a huge success and we hope to do it again next year! A huge thank you to everyone who attended and particularly to the Atlanta Skeptics team who volunteered their time and effort to help out. We simply could not have done it without you:
Heidi Anderson – who made countless airport runs and MARTA shuttle runs to get people where they needed to be.
Joe Anderson – who helped with several airport runs, hotel and shuttle runs.
John Daigle – who created the flyers and program for the event, and helped with airport runs as well.
Mark Ditsler and LaVerne Knight-West from Abrupt Media, who ran all our A/V and took care of our technical needs. Mark and LaVerne also give us their time and equipment for Skeptics in the Pub every month and are generally kick ass.
Stephen King – who helped man the sales tables at the event, collect money and help out through the evening.
Daphne Ross – who helped research locations when we first started looking into the event, worked with the Atlanta Astronomy folks and helped out at registration during the event.
Ken Ross – who was our official photographer.
“Surly” Amy Roth – who created a bunch of custom Surly Ramics jewelry for us for the speakers and guest of honor and created some star and moon themed jewelry to sell at the table. Amy also donated a portion of the sales to the American Cancer Society in Jeff’s name.
Andrew Sevrinsky – who told me that he thought this was the coolest idea ever and whatever we needed, he would do. And then proceeded to do it.
Blake Smith who helped with airport runs and various technical advice.
Alicia Vickery – who helped with registration and made successful airport runs, despite bad information from me!
Scott Weikert – who made airport and hotel runs, was a clearinghouse for various packages and orders we had come in and generally ran around and did a host of other things when I needed him to.
Also:
My husband, Christian Walters, who did so many things I can’t even begin to list them. And he has to live with me. The man is a saint, nuff said. 
Carrie and Tim Iwan and Kamy Lyon, who stayed up late into the night assembling Galileoscopes.
George Hrab, Derek and Swoopy, Rebecca Watson and the SGU gang, Evo Terra and his gang, Richard Saunders and the Australian Skeptics, Brian Thompson, Jeff Wagg, John Snider and David Driscoll, Hemant Mehta who all publicized the event via blog or podcast.
And of course, a huge thank you to Phil Plait and Pamela Gay for giving up their time and energy to work with us on this, in spite of being extraordinarily busy.
I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone. Wow, in writing this up, I realize what a huge number of people worked on this and how incredibly cool this community is. Thank you all.
