The NWFAA made its first trip up to the Laurel Hill School on Friday the 6th of November to support their Science night. As usual we set up just before dusk and while we waited for the sky to darken took part in the school’s spaghetti dinner fund raiser. We are hoping for more star gaze invitations based on the spaghetti dinner alone.
Dean Covey, Tom Haugh and Chuck Lynch each brought telescopes for our guest observers to view the sky through. Since neither the Moon nor any bright planets were visible we had to rely on deep sky objects for our targets. The Great Hercules Cluster (M-13), the Ring Nebula (M-57) and the Andromeda Galaxy (M-31) were all visible as well as numerous other celestial targets. For the school’s first event, the turnout was outstanding keeping each telescope in constant use. The guest observers were enthusiastic and asked plenty of intelligent questions.
We were quite amazed at the darkness of the Laurel Hill sky. Even though there were a couple of annoying security lights bright enough that we cast shadows, the Milky Way was plainly visible crossing the sky.
Spaghetti dinner and a dark sky; you can’t do any better than that.