The 7th of June edition of the Henderson Beach State Park Sky View was the first to formally include solar observing. We set up telescopes three hours prior to sunset to allow the public a safe view the sun. Tom Haugh and Dennis Hausch were the first to arrive and setup with Dean Covey arriving soon after. We had a sparse but steady stream of guest observers as we viewed the Sun through ever increasing gaps in the clouds. Dennis and Tom provided white light views while Dennis and Dean offered H-Alpha views as well.
Dean aligns his H-alpha scope to view the Sun.
The NWFAA has always invited the public to bring their own equipment to the star gazes. We had two young astronomers take advantage of our invitation and brought along their refracting telescope. They were having problems finding what they were looking for and needed a little help. We explained the importance of aligning the finder to the telescope and helped get their alignment a bit better than it was.
Tom explains how to align the finder scope to the telescope.
As the sun set and the sky darkened, the crowd continued to grow. Luckily, the clouds did not. They steadily diminished and by the time the sky was fully dark, there were no clouds to hamper the view. As the crowd grew so did our selection of telescopes. Frank Atchison, Ken Leone, Tony Russo, Bob Schritter and Stephen Forbes each added their telescopes to the sky pointing arsenal.
The evening viewing started with Venus and Mercury high in the western twilight. This was the first time a lot of our guest observers had ever viewed Mercury with or without a telescope.
Saturn, high overhead, was a crowd favorite (as usual). Antares was visible low in the south, Arcturus high overhead, and Vega was following in the east. M 13 was able to compete with the gulf haze although the Ring Nebula was just barely visible. The guests were treated to several bright Messier objects as well as the Alcor/Mizar pair in Ursa Major.
As is usual for Henderson Beach we had more than 100 guest observers. Once again, the NWFAA would like to thank the rangers of Henderson Beach State Park for hosting the sky view and allowing us to share our passion of the night sky with their guests.