Greetings fellow astrophiles, An excellent week of CNY weather has taken a significant turn for the overcast tonight and, very likely, tomorrow night. Our Messier Marathon is, therefore, cancelled for tonight, but a similar run can be performed for the vast majority of the Messier objects during our next few meetings. Check in tomorrow around 5:00 p.m. for the official word on Saturday. In the meantime, consider doing a little observing in the hi-res version of the ESO image below (click for the large version), a sliver of the sky with 200,000 galaxies (more information can be found at the […]
Public Viewing
84 posts
Greetings fellow astrophile! I am thankful today that there’s predicted to be enough dark sky to warrant observing for what is the last official Public Viewing session for 2011. Darling Hill will open by 6 p.m. for as much final observing as we can, although we do plan on trying to open on December 10th for the lunar eclipse. Jupiter remains the most brilliant object in the night sky, Uranus is visible in decent-sized scopes, and Mars makes its return to our Public Viewing sessions (if you’re at the observatory around 1:00 a.m., which may or may not happen given […]
Greetings fellow astrophiles, We’ll be opening the observatory tonight with the Moon past half-full, making for observing conditions that strongly favor the Moon (obviously), Jupiter, and brighter clusters. It will be quite cold (so dress for mid-winter temperatures) and is predicted to be quite clear. According to heavens-above.com, we’ll be having TWO passes of the International Space Station tonight, although we’ll only likely be able to see one of them. The better-seen of the two, starting at 7:43 p.m., will be low in the horizon from West to South, just below or between the radars of Corona Borealis, Hercules, Ophiuchus, […]
Greetings, fellow astrophiles! We have decided to try to make something of this weekend’s Public Observing Session and will be opening Darling Hill tonight around 7:30 p.m. It will be cold and still partly overcast, but we hope the clouds keep to a minimum to allow us to reclaim some of the observing time lost over the last few completely overcast weekends. Again, dress for extra-cold conditions. You will be the only source of heat at the observatory tonight, so try to keep as much of it for yourself as you can. NOTE: Those of you present (or looking North-West) […]