I just received a ZWO SeeStar S50 for my outreach this Christmas. My plan is to cast/mirror my tablet to a 36" tv, then set up the tv at a location away from the other scopes to keep the light to a minimum. I am also thinking of setting up with a person who has a visual scope so people can see what to expect before they actually view through the visual scope.
I got this idea from Urban Astronomy:
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I would like to hear from others who do outreach with smart scopes and see if there are any additional ideas from this community.
I have given this some thought @avescio and I came up with some ideas. I do not do any outreach and at the time of this post I don’t have a Seestar but I hope my thoughts are useful to you somehow.
I believe you will need to set up a large display for sure. So people can see the images as they progress over time. Maybe connect the tablet to a larger screen so everybody can see it easily without huddling around the tablet or phone in large groups.
Explaining to people what this camera does is good as mentioned in the blog article you linked. You explain that the camera takes a lot of short exposure photos and stacks them into one image which is what you see. This is compared to a larger telescope and dedicated astro camera on an equatorial mount that will be set up to take longer exposures over a longer time and stack them or require somebody to use software to stack them.
People may not understand what it actually does, and at the core, it does what most astro rigs do but ZWO has made this one do it in a much more compact user-friendly way.
I think it is important to tell people what you are imagining. If you have a chance to plan your imaging session you could also have some detailed info about the object you are imaging on the night or have Sky Safari on hand to look it up on the run. But if they are new to astronomy don’t go into too much detail unless they ask because you want to get people excited about the images, not put them to sleep with the science of it all.
Science is for people who have become mature about astronomy, but make the outreach fun and engaging, not a technical demonstration of the camera or an advanced astronomy lesson unless that is your goal for the outreach. Make it interesting to show people what they can do themself if they get into the hobby and let them learn about all the technical stuff when they are ready.
I use a Vespera Pro which WiFis to my iPad. For me, the trick in public is to pick targets that are immediately visible at some level. You engage with people about how this all works while an image develops. The iPad is big enough for multiple viewers. In 30-40 min you switch to another hot target. The DSOs have plenty of ooh and aah for an audience…