NorthWest Florida Astronomy Association

The WEBELOS of Cub Scout Pack 799 visited the NWFSC observatory on the 5th of October to accomplish requirements for the award of Scientist activity badges, and Science or Astronomy belt loops.

As the guest observers arrived, the sky was very cloudy. Tom Haugh conducted a quick safety briefing and then handed out sky charts and after explaining how to use the charts, held a quick question and answer session. The group then adjourned inside to the observatory’s classroom for a presentation on general Astronomy.

After the presentation was complete the group went up to the dome room where Professor Russo conducted a tour of the telescope and dome equipment. By then the sky had started to clear and the scouts and leaders finished up outside at Frank Atchison’s 8″ Meade for a tour of the evenings objects visible through the thinning clouds.

We would like to thank the leaders and scouts of Pack 799 for the opportunity to share our knowledge of the night sky. We would also like to thank Professor Russo for his time and North West Florida State College for its permission to use the observatory and school facilities.

Once again, we started the Henderson Beach Sky View with solar observing.  Setting up 3 hours before sunset,  Dennis Hausch, Dean Covery, Frank Atchison and Tom Haugh provided safe viewing of our nearest star: The Sun.  Even though this was only the second time we set up earlier than normal for solar viewing we had quite a few more guest observers.  Dennis and Dean brought Hydrogen Alpha telescopes while Frank and Dean provided white light views.  Unfortunately, the sun was fairly quiet and there were only a few small sunspots to view.  Tom brought his spectroscope to give the guest observers yet another way to view the sun.

As the sun dropped lower in the sky Ken Leone, Dave Halupowski, Chuck Lynch and Ken Sharp added their telescopes to the collection. Meanwhile, the filters came off, the H-alpha scopes and spectroscope were packed away and night time preparations started.  Tom passed out star charts as the crowd grew and briefed each small group on how the sky view would proceed.
As the sky darkened, the first targets of the evening were a thin 3-day old sliver of Moon and the planet Venus.  Arcturus  and Vega came next as the sky continued to darken.  Saturn, as usual, was a crowd favorite.  By then, the sky was dark enough for the deep sky objects to start making their entrances.

The Ring Nebula, The Great Hercules Cluster, the colorful Alberio as well as many other Messier objects were all viewed.  The ‘Tea Pot’ of Sagittarius was outlined and by then, surprisingly, the Milky Way made an appearance as it was visible from the southern horizon nearly to the zenith where it was overpowered by the sky glow.  This is the first Henderson Beach Sky View where our galaxy was obviously visible.  Fortunately, we ran out of guest observers before we ran out of objects to view.

Once again the  park rangers estimated the attendance exceeded 100 guests.  We would like to thank them for coming out and the we would like to thank the Henderson Beach State Park staff for a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon and evening.