NorthWest Florida Astronomy Association

While other members supported Valpariso’s Saturday in the Park event, Tom Haugh supported Walton County’s Earth Day Festival at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. He had a Hydrogen-Alpha telescope setup for the guests to safely view the Sun up close. But, with the Sun approaching solar minimum, there was little to see other than convection cells on the Sun’s surface.

There was a steady stream of guests that got to view the Sun. Tom also handed out a lot of the club’s schedule of state park star gazes as well as 2018 Pear Tree Observatory calendars.

Our annual trip up north to Spanish Trails Scout Reservation in support of the 2018 Tiger Growl was, once again, great. Scout attendance was a little down from past years but there were plenty of additional brothers, sisters, Moms and Dads to keep us busy.

We also had plenty of support from club members:

• Frank Atchison
• James Dubben
• Chris and Danny Ellis
• George and Renee Gollehon
• Tom Haugh

James, of course, brought the clubs 16″ Dobsonian. New members Chris and Danny brought their scope which turned into an OJT session as they got more observing experience with a line of scouts at the ready. Frank mounted his DSLR to his Williams refractor and our guests observed via his preview screen. Tom started off the evening viewing the Trapezium in twilight. No nebula was visible yet since the sky was too bright, but the 4 main stars were easily visible.

As the sky darkened, more of our standard fare came into view:

• Sirius
• M41
• M42 (the rest of it)
• M45
• M1
• M81
• M35

Later, the Moon only one day past full, cleared the treeline and washed out the deep sky objects, but by then most of the scouts had adjourned to their camp sites and we wrapped up a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

We would like to thank the scout leaders for inviting us again and sharing their dark skies with us.

For the past couple of years our January “How to use your new telescope” event has been plagued by bad weather. This year we coordinated with the Emerald Coast Science Center in hosting the event. We piggy-backed on our regular support for the center’s Planetarium Night. We were hoping this year would be more productive. It was.

We had three telescopes brought to the center by the public. This may not seem like much but it is three times the number of participating scopes than we have had in the past. Club members Frank Atchison, Dean Covey, Tom Haugh, Dennis Hausch and Professor Tony Russo supported this event.

One owner brought an older Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain fork mounted scope that he had difficulty setting up and aligning. Professor Russo assisted him. Unfortunately, the firmware in his hand controller appeared to be corrupt. He was advised to contact Meade to see if his system was capable of being re-flashed with new software. His scope was fine; his controller was not.

We had one owner bring a small Newtonian reflector over from Pensacola. She was having problems focusing the scope. The telescope proved to be significantly out of collimation. We had enough tools on hand so that Dennis was able to bring the mirrors back into alignment. We took the scope outside and were able to check the scope out on Jupiter high overhead.

The last telescope was a brand new 60mm refractor brought by the owner and his Dad. He was looking for hints and tips about using the scope. He was given lots of advice and some Astronomy magazines to assist in his Astronomy adventure.

We invited all the participants to come to one of our meetings or to one of our public star gazes once they start back up in April.

The Watersound Origins community invited us to come out and provide a star gaze to the members participating in their first community campout event. We were located on the north edge of the community where new construction was taking place. This provided a very dark northern sky. To the south was the campers along with their large inflatable movie screen. The screen illuminated the southern horizon somewhat but not as much as we had feared.

The following NWFAA members supported the event:

• Frank Atchison
• Dean Covey
• James & Susie Dubben
• Tom Haugh
• Dennis & Marietta Hausch
• Robert Sutphen

We setup before dusk just in time to view Saturn before it set below the high southwestern treeline. Eventually, the skies got dark enough to view the Milky Way from high overhead towards the northern horizon.

Ultimately, we showed our guest observers the following objects:

• Saturn
• M 1 (Crab Nebula)
• M 13 (Great Hercules Cluster)
• M 31 (Andromeda Galaxy)
• M 36
• M 37
• M 38
• M 42 (Orion Nebula)
• M 57 (Ring Nebula)
• Double Cluster (NGC 869 & 884)
• Vega
• Alberio

The observers kept us busy as they came out to view in a constant stream of small groups and individuals. Toward the end of the star gaze, as our guest observers wandered back to the tent area, we took the opportunity to compare the capabilities of all our scopes. Everyone targeted the Crab Nebula (M 1). As you would expect the 16″ showed the nebula the best but we all agreed on the need for a light shroud.

Thanks go to Marietta Hausch for the event photo.

The skies cooperated with our support for the 2017 Walton County Explore the Outdoors Festival. Unfortunately, the Sun did not.

Dean shows a young observer the hydrogen-alpha Sun.

Guest observers view the Sun through Dennis and Dean’s scopes.

With solar activity heading toward periodic minimum, there were no sunspots visible through Dennis Hausch’s white light filtered Maksutov, nor were there any filaments or prominences visible through Dean Covey’s hydrogen-alpha telescope. Tom Haugh’s spectroscope was the only instrument not hampered by the Sun’s inactivity.

Dennis now has Venus visible in his scope.

Several observers view the solar spectrum.

In fact, since there was nothing visible on the Sun, Dennis re-pointed his scope, removed the filter and provided a view of Venus in broad daylight. We passed out quite a few club handouts, annual schedules and the last of Tom’s 2017 calendars. Once again we want to thank Marietta Hausch for providing the event photos.