Our final 2019 public star gaze at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park coincided with the annual International Observe the Moon Night (IOMN). It was also on the same weekend as Topsail’s “Rollin’ Through the Decades” vintage and antique RV show. Thus the planets aligned (sorry) to produce one of our best attended nighttime star gazes at the park.
We had several members support the event:
- Walter Dunn
- George & Renee Gollehon
- Tom Haugh
- Scott Morgan
We started early enough to view the Sun. Unfortunately, as expected, there was no activity visible. Then as the evening sky darkened, we shifted over to nighttime scopes and targets:
- Moon (it was IOMN after all)
- Jupiter
- Saturn
- Neptune
- M 31 (The Andromeda Galaxy)
We had 80+ guest observers some of which stayed all the way to 2130. There were lots of good questions, discussions and satisfied guest observers. We look forward to resuming our state park star gazes at Topsail Hill next year.