This was one of our best disappointing stargazes ever. With the forecast calling for clearing skies around sunset, we headed over to the park. Surprisingly, when we arrived the skies were already clear, so solar viewing was first on the schedule. Dennis setup for white light viewing while Tom setup his H-alpha scope. As usual with the Sun exhibiting increasing activity as it heads toward solar max, there were several groups of sunspots with one particularly large one. In the H-alpha arena, there were several small prominences, a couple of long filaments and even the large sunspot was visible. We had about 20 guest observers during our solar observing session. But as the Sun neared the horizon, it started to cloud up, not clear up.
The broken clouds turned into near total overcast. Weather RADAR showed rain on the other side of the bay but luckily it was not heading towards us. Unfortunately, that is when several families from a local home school group started to arrive. After everyone got comfortable waiting for the sky to clear, a lively question and answer session started. Lots of excellent questions were fielded interrupted only by “there’s the Moon!”. Of course, by the time the guests got to the scopes, the hole moved on and only a couple of viewers got to see anything. So, the questions would start again.
Eventually, younger eyes spotted Vega and Antares just shining through some of the thinner layers and scopes were hastily pointed in those directions. Occasionally, the Moon would make a brief appearance but never for very long.
We applaud the group for their questions and their endurance. Several guests stayed all the way to the 9:00 PM stop time.
The club was represented by:
- Dave Halupowski
- Tom Haugh
- Marietta & Dennis Hausch
UPDATE: Tom later reported that it eventually did clear up just before midnight.