With significant construction happening next to the park’s main parking lot which is the club’s normal set up site, we had to move deeper into the park to hold our first public star gaze of 2025. The new location is temporary while the construction continues but it worked out OK. The southern horizon is higher which limits the view a little. There is a large old pine tree that will block objects for a time as they transit the sky but overall, the site is will work fine.
We estimated an attendance of 75 or so guest observers. Being much closer to the camp area we had a higher percentage of camping guests than normal. We started, as usual, with solar observing. The Sun showed a couple of good-sized sunspot groups in the white light filtered scopes, with just a hint of a prominence as well as a couple of nice dark filaments through the H-Alpha scope. Once the pines started to obscure the Sun, we transitioned to nighttime equipment. Jupiter and Mars were the planets that were up. Additional targets such as M 45 and M 42 were observed.
The club was well represented:
- Renee & George Gollehon
- Tom Haugh
- Dennis & Marietta Hausch
- Chris Mizell
- Ken Yates