Most of the time NWFAA members do their observing at night. Even when we setup early for solar observing at our public star gazes it is usually late afternoon. So a start time of 10:00 AM was a little early for some of us. But we had plenty of telescopes pointed into the bright sky for Hurlburt Field’s annual family picnic.
The day started out clear and warm. It proceeded to get a little cloudy and hot – really hot. The clouds were quite broken so when they did intervene, the break from the sun was very welcome. Did I mention that it got hot? Luckily we were in between some of the food vendors and one of the water attractions so we had a constant stream of guest observers.
Bob really wanted to get in line for the walk-in water balls.
Dennis Hausch, Frank Atchison, Bob Schritter, Tom Haugh and Ken Leone provided the troops with views of the solar disk and several sunspot groups. Dennis brought his Hydrogen-Alpha scope and everyone else displayed white light views of varying magnification. Chuck Lynch rounded out our participation and took over a scope when someone needed a break. Did I mention is was hot?
Ken attempts a solar photo through Dennis’ H-alpha scope.
This was just a standard summer family picnic: hot dogs, balloons, music, military parachutes filling the skies and all the kiddies watching to see who’s Dad would assemble his M-16 the quickest. We would like to thank the base for inviting us to share our passion for astronomy. We were honored to participate in the bases annual family picnic. Thanks to Frank for the pictures.
Tom explains the white light view to some of our guest observers.