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.
Dennis and Frank start setting up their telescopes.
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.
The growing crowd observes the Sun waiting for the sky to darken.
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.