The NWFAA\u00a0supported the South Walton Community Council’s annual ‘Back To Nature’ event with a Sky View on the 15th of October.\u00a0 The weather was forecast to be good and, for once, \u00a0it was.\u00a0 As we were setting up and aligning telescopes, the guest observers\u00a0checked in with the event coordinator.<\/p>\n
Each observer was given a sky map courtesy of\u00a0 http:\/\/skymaps.com<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0 These provide not only a map of the sky but a calendar of events appropriate to the month.\u00a0\u00a0 There are also separate lists of\u00a0objects visible to the naked eye, binoculars, or telescopes.\u00a0 As the sky darkened a quick briefing on how to orient and use\u00a0the map, what some of the possible objects that would be seen and star party etiquette were presented.<\/p>\n While we waited for\u00a0the sky to completely darken, Tom\u00a0displayed imagery he has taken at the Pear Tree Observatory. And once the sky was dark, the guest observers started visiting\u00a0each telescope.\u00a0\u00a0 All the while, Professor Russo provided running commentary on the nights visible constellations and some of the historical background for each.<\/p>\n We had several telescopes going so I lost track of all the objects that were seen.\u00a0 We started off with Comet Garradd which is still providing an easy target and went from there.\u00a0 The Ring Nebula (M57), the Great Hercules Globular Cluster (M13) and the Wild Duck Cluster (M11) were in the list as well as Jupiter when it cleared the trees.\u00a0 The sky was dark enough (normal for a clear night at Topsail Hill) that the Milky Way was easily visible but the transparency dropped a little later in the evening.<\/p>\n Due to our favorable location we were able to view two different passes by the International Space Station.\u00a0 The first was quite high with the second low on the northwestern horizon, but both easily viewable.<\/p>\n In all, some\u00a030-40 guest observers attended and the event was well received.\u00a0 We look forward to supporting the ‘Back to Nature’ event again next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The NWFAA\u00a0supported the South Walton Community Council’s annual ‘Back To Nature’ event with a Sky View on the 15th of October.\u00a0 The weather was forecast to be good and, for once, \u00a0it was.\u00a0 As we were setting up and aligning telescopes, the guest observers\u00a0checked in with the event coordinator. Each observer was given a sky […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-past-events","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p84Dqx-4L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwfastro.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}