Our first visit to Camp Longleaf at E.O.Wilson Biophilia Center was a great success. The center is located in a heavily forested area of the Florida panhandle. It is also in an area of little light pollution. Understandably, they are reluctant to cut down any of the pines they are preserving and our past events at the center were exercises in matching gaps in the trees to objects in the sky.
This past year though, the center constructed an overnight camping area and as a result had to do a little land clearing. That resulted in a small area of much clearer viewing than was available before and we took advantage of that for the Girl Scout event. Since we already had an event scheduled for International Observe the Moon Night, the scouts changed their schedule and asked us to come out the night before.
We had plenty of members support this event with scopes and information:
- Walter Dunn
- Chris Foley (our newest member)
- George & Renee Gollehon
- Tom Haugh
- John Walker (all the way from Milton, FL)
Once we had the scopes set up and were waiting for the sky to darken, we were treated to a great spaghetti dinner. After dinner and before we headed out to the scopes, Tom gave instructions on how to use the sky maps that we handed out. He also handed out a NASA solar system trading card set to each of our guest observers.
We had about 20 Girl Scouts and leaders. In addition to the scopes set up by our members, there was also the binocular table and a library scope that the scouts could use at their leisure. This scope had continuous usage throughout the evening and one scout got a great smart phone picture of the Moon using it.
Since the event was one day shy of International Observe the Moon Night, the Moon was well situated and was a prime target. In addition to the Moon we also observed:
- Jupiter (before sunset)
- Saturn
- M 13 (The Great Hercules Cluster)
- M 31 (The Andromeda Galaxy)
- NGC 869/884 (The Double Cluster)
- Neptune
We would like to thank the Girl Scouts of Gateway Council for the invitation to share our passion for the night sky with their scouts. We would also like to thank the E.O.Wilson Biophilia Center for once again hosting one of our events.