The second time was the charm as the rescheduled Hurlburt Field Star Gaze was a great success. Coincidentally, the 28th was a multi-purpose day as it was also National Astronomy Day and the NWFAA’s regularly scheduled meeting night. This is event is usually a cooperative event between the NWFAA and the Escambia Amateur Astronomers Association (EAAA) out of Pensacola, but the reschedule conflicted with one of their beach sidewalk star gazes. We would like to thanks Gary W. for coming over and helping us support the Hurlburt Library. ( He also brought the largest scope ). If you haven’t been to one of the EAAA’s beach sidewalk star gazes or better yet, one of their monthly sky interpretation events at Ft. Pickens you really should try and make one.
The usual suspects +1.
Astronomy merit badge requirement 1a.
This year we had additional help during setup. A couple of Boy Scouts came out to work on their Astronomy merit badges and successfully accomplished several requirements. They assisted the Library staff with setting up the break area and helped unload some of the telescopes. Once they had the support tasks done, they started on the Astronomy.
Once we finished initial setup we quickly held our April meeting. By then guest observers had started to arrive.
Young guest observing the moon.
The moon started things off until the sky was fully dark. Our clubs had seven telescopes on site and two guest observers brought telescopes to add to the arsenal.
With that many scopes the planets that were stretched out across the sky were well covered. Toward the west, Venus was very prominent as it headed into a waning crescent phase. Mars high overhead and Saturn climbing out of the eastern haze also had dedicated coverage. The Great Orion Nebula was visible for a short time until it dropped into the Gulf of Mexico haze. Sirius and neighbor M 41 were also visible for a while.
The International Space Station made a brief appearance. It arrived quite late and as such dropped into the earth’s shadow quite high in the sky.
Sabrina, our POC for the Hurlburt Field Library said the attendance was 220+. We would like to thank her for her invitation, support and cookies. She also provided the photos posted here.