Schedule of Events

Weather Permitting - The 1930 Porter Turret Telescope is located just north of the clubhouse on Breezy Hill.

Provided to give amateurs an opportunity to trade, buy or sell their surplus astronomical and telescope related items

Weather Permitting - The circa 1930 Cook Spectrohelioscope will be observing solar prominences and sunspots in hydrogen-alpha light. The Simoni Observatory is northwest of the Stellafane Clubhouse on Breezy Hill.

Start at the pink table set up outside the Pavilion, at the bottom of the road past the Food Tent. Congrats, you have already found the first location! Pick up your passport and read the first clue. It's fun! And a great way to learn more about Stellafane, so stretch your legs and shake some sillies out. Don't despair, if you get tired you can take the bus for a bit.

Bus Stops: Pine Island (camping area), Food Tent, Pink Clubhouse

Weather Permitting - The 1930 Porter Turret Telescope is located just north of the clubhouse on Breezy Hill.

Intro & Grinding

Joe Dechene will walk through tonight’s sky map to help you learn your constellations and how to find the various astro-objects in each. He will give examples and links to free resources to help you on your journey. The sky map used for this presentation is available as a free download: “What’s Out Tonight” Aug 2026 star map from KenPress.com.

Give mirror grinding a try!

See the individual timeslot entries on the full schedule for the topic(s) demonstrated.

Ages 5 - 12 : Younger children are welcome but will need help from a parent. All about Saturn.

Age 5-16 Drop in at any scheduled time to pick up your Clubhouse Treasure Hunt list from the Telescope Competition Registrar in the Clubhouse. Two lists will be available, one for ages 5-7 years old, and another for ages 8-16 years. Hunt in the Clubhouse for the items on the list at your own pace and return your completed Treasure Hunt list to the Telescope Competition Registrar for a small prize! Saturday Bonus - the Mechanical portion of the Telescope Competition will be occurring at the Clubhouse on Saturday at the same time! The judges will close the Clubhouse for deliberations during the Mechanical Competition, but it will most likely be open during the times scheduled for the Treasure Hunt.

Topics include, but are not limited to: A short history of Stellafane, a description of our site, including the buildings and landmarks, descriptions of the scheduled talks and activities, services available at Stellafane, local services off site, etc., in addition to answering any questions you may have about the Convention.

Making Dental Stone Tools

During the “Telescope Field Walk” an experienced Amateur Telescope Maker will guide small groups through the fields around the Pink Clubhouse, where the telescopes that will be participating in the mechanical competition will be set up. Your guide will describe the various types of optical designs and mounting configurations that will be on display, point out the subtle details that go into award winning telescopes and be available to answer your questions.

Making Pitch Laps

To illustrate the vast size of outer space, the Springfield Telescope Makers have constructed a scale model of the solar system, based on the Sun being 12 inches in diameter. The Solar System walk can be taken on your own at any time during the Convention. However, a guided walk is available Friday and Saturday when a docent will provide additional information about the “Solar System Walk” and each particular planet. The walk takes approximately ¾ of an hour if you walk all the way to the planet Neptune, with a total distance of 3,232 feet or a little over ½ of a mile.

Polishing & Figuring

Marc Polansky will talk about searching for and cataloging potentially hazardous asteroids, refining their observed orbits, and either ruling out an Earth impact, or confirming it with enough lead time to do something about it to avoid disaster.

Why use a telescope? What are the basic types of telescopes? Anatomy of a basic Newtonian. What end goes where? How to change eyepieces? How to really see stuff? These and other questions will be answered in a friendly, hands-on indoor setting. This is the place to be if you know nothing about telescopes and want to learn hands-on.

Middle School Age and Younger