Our 2019 visit to Eden Gardens State Park went without a hitch, as usual. We set up scopes just before sunset, but in plenty of time to view Jupiter in the bright evening sky. As the skies slowly darkened, the Galilean moons came into view one by one.
Waiting for sunset in front of the Wesley House.
We had 6 club members support the event this year. They provided 6 scopes for use by our guests.
- Dean Covey
- Walter Dunn
- George & Renee Gollehon
- Tom Haugh
- Scott Morgan
The park ranger that supported us had already set up a table with state park handouts, including a stack of our club handouts. She reported an attendance count of 55 people although some more might have joined after sunset when it was too dark to be accurate.
In addition to Jupiter we also viewed the planets Saturn (always a crowd favorite) and Neptune. The skies at the park are fairly dark for being so close to the gulf but later in the evening some high haze showed up that reduced the number of dimmer objects that we could see. We were able to show our guest observers, among others, Alcor & Mizar, Alberio and Messier objects 22 & 57.
We need to thank the Gollehons for the event photo.
We had an great time and look forward to our visit to the park next year.