NorthWest Florida Astronomy Association

With significant construction happening next to the park’s main parking lot which is the club’s normal set up site, we had to move deeper into the park to hold our first public star gaze of 2025. The new location is temporary while the construction continues but it worked out OK. The southern horizon is higher which limits the view a little. There is a large old pine tree that will block objects for a time as they transit the sky but overall, the site is will work fine.

We estimated an attendance of 75 or so guest observers. Being much closer to the camp area we had a higher percentage of camping guests than normal. We started, as usual, with solar observing. The Sun showed a couple of good-sized sunspot groups in the white light filtered scopes, with just a hint of a prominence as well as a couple of nice dark filaments through the H-Alpha scope. Once the pines started to obscure the Sun, we transitioned to nighttime equipment. Jupiter and Mars were the planets that were up. Additional targets such as M 45 and M 42 were observed.

The club was well represented:

• Renee & George Gollehon
• Tom Haugh
• Dennis & Marietta Hausch
• Chris Mizell
• Ken Yates

This was one of our best disappointing stargazes ever. With the forecast calling for clearing skies around sunset, we headed over to the park. Surprisingly, when we arrived the skies were already clear, so solar viewing was first on the schedule. Dennis setup for white light viewing while Tom setup his H-alpha scope. As usual with the Sun exhibiting increasing activity as it heads toward solar max, there were several groups of sunspots with one particularly large one. In the H-alpha arena, there were several small prominences, a couple of long filaments and even the large sunspot was visible. We had about 20 guest observers during our solar observing session. But as the Sun neared the horizon, it started to cloud up, not clear up.

The broken clouds turned into near total overcast. Weather RADAR showed rain on the other side of the bay but luckily it was not heading towards us. Unfortunately, that is when several families from a local home school group started to arrive. After everyone got comfortable waiting for the sky to clear, a lively question and answer session started. Lots of excellent questions were fielded interrupted only by “there’s the Moon!”. Of course, by the time the guests got to the scopes, the hole moved on and only a couple of viewers got to see anything. So, the questions would start again.

Eventually, younger eyes spotted Vega and Antares just shining through some of the thinner layers and scopes were hastily pointed in those directions. Occasionally, the Moon would make a brief appearance but never for very long.

We applaud the group for their questions and their endurance. Several guests stayed all the way to the 9:00 PM stop time.

The club was represented by:

• Dave Halupowski
• Tom Haugh
• Marietta & Dennis Hausch

UPDATE: Tom later reported that it eventually did clear up just before midnight.

The Topsail Hill Preserve state park public star gaze event started with quite a bit of clouds but, as forecast, the clouds passed by and the skies cleared. As usual for Topsail we started off with solar observing. There were several sunspot groups, a couple of prominences and one large area of plage.

Overall. we had about 45 guest observers for the event. The solar system’s geometry was arranged with the planets all in the immediate vicinity of the Sun, so there were few bright targets other than a crescent Moon.

However, as we were wrapping up, aurora became visible including some obvious streamers. A very slight pink tint was naked eye visible and although faint, the patterns were changing fairly rapidly.

The club had several members supporting the event:

• Dave Halupowski
• Tom Haugh
• Dennis & Marietta Hausch
• David Marshall

We must be doing something right since this was the 12th year we have been invited to support the Boy Scout Tiger Growl at the Spanish Trails Scout Reservation. During that time, the Lion rank scouts were added making the event a Lion/Tiger growl.

Even though the Moon was only 12 hours from being full, we were able to observe some of the brighter celestial objects visible. Along with the Moon we were able to see Jupiter and its Galilean moons, M 41 and M 42 as well as several bright stars and clusters. James pointed out the winter constellations providing some basic information for future Astronomy belt loop awards.

This year we counted 63 scouts, parents and siblings as guest observers.

We had great support from the club:

• Norm Dingle
• James Dubben
• George & Renee Gollehon
• Dave Halupowski
• Tom Haugh

We, once again, want to thank the scouts for the invitation to share our passion for the universe and look forward to invitation number 13.