Community Observatory

This weekend, April 3rd and 4th, offers a transitional sky—one foot in winter’s rich constellations and the other stepping into the treasures of spring. The Moon will be in its waxing gibbous phase, bright enough to dominate the sky when it rises around 10 PM but still leaving a window for darker-sky observing earlier in the night. Visitors early in the session will have the best chance to catch fainter deep-sky objects before moonlight begins to wash them out. To the west, the familiar winter constellations are beginning their seasonal exit. Orion will still be visible shortly after sunset, giving us one of the last good opportunities this season to observe the stunning Orion Nebula. Nearby, Taurus and the Pleiades continue to sparkle, though they’ll dip below the horizon earlier each night. The image of the Pleiades is a recent one from my backyard. You might see something similar if you ask the docent at the east scope in the Observatory to target it on the big screen. Looking overh...

  What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? We are looking at a partially cloudy weekend with about an 80% full moon. The Full-Moon is next Wednesday. That means that the seeing won’t be great but we will still be able to enjoy views of the Moon and Jupiter and of the brighter deep sky objects. Jupiter and Venus will be the only naked-eye planets. Venus is dazzling and being on the opposite side of the Sun, it is presenting a full disk. When it is between us and the Sun we see it go through phases like the moon does as the Sun is illuminating its back side from us. Its proximity to the Sun means that it is always relatively low in the sky. That position means that we are looking through a lot of our atmosphere when we see it. That means that it isn’t a great view as the air distorts the image. Jupiter with its four Galilean Moons continues to be our star attraction. We were able to see the transit of Jupiter’s moon Titan last week as its shadow passed ac...

    What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? This could be a great weekend to visit the Community Observatory. The new moon was Wednesday and it will not interfere with our seeing all weekend. The forecast is for some clouds on both Friday and Saturday night but, unless that changes for the worse, we will be open both nights. Friday will be a regular public viewing, but Saturday will be special. We will be conducting our annual “Messier Marathon” from sundown to sunup on Sunday morning. There will be a large crew of us attempting to take images of 109 of the 110 deep-sky objects on Charles Messier’s list of deep sky objects. We will also have visual telescopes for you to look through during our regular 9 until 11 PM viewing session. It may be a bit crazy because the marathon and the regular public viewing will be happening at the same time. Our visitors, of course, are welcome to circulate with the ones participating in the marathon. It can...

What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? The new moon falls on next Wednesday so both this weekend and next will be very dark. Unfortunately, the prediction is for about 50% cloud cover. We will be monitoring the weather and will decide if we will be open no later than 3 PM on the day of the event. Be SURE to check communityobservatory.com after 3 PM on the day you plan to visit. If we are going to be closed, we will post it by then. This is our first weekend for our Daylight Savings Time Summer schedule. We will be there from 9:00 until 11:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays until November when we drop back to standard time. Jupiter and Uranus are the only planets that you are likely to see this weekend. Venus and Saturn will have set in the west before we open. This year’s much hyped “Planetary Parade” turns out to be a disappointment. There are some great deep-sky objects to view this time of the year. Orion continues to impressively occupy the Southern Hor...

    What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? The days are getting longer by about 2 minutes each day.   The Sunset is after 6 PM now and good seeing won’t be until after 7 PM. With next week’s change to Daylight Savings Time, a 7:30 start time would mean that we would be starting while it is still quite light. So, this is our last week to be meeting from 7:30-9:30 PM. We will be switching to our Summer Hours of 9 until 11 PM next weekend. The Moon was full on Tuesday morning and has been rising around 50 minutes later each day. It won’t rise until after we close on Friday and Saturday. Given that and a prediction of clear skies, it could be a great weekend to visit the observatory. Last week’s “Planetary Alignment” did not nearly live up to social media hype. We had a weather closure on Saturday but several of us still showed up because we knew people would still show up. About twenty people did show up and we were able to show Jupiter...

  What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? We will have a mostly-full gibbous waxing moon this weekend. That won’t make for optimal seeing. The weather also isn’t cooperating with “considerable cloudiness” forecast for both Friday and Saturday night. So, please be sure to check out our website before you make the trip up the hill. We will delay cancelling until it is clear that we won’t have decent seeing. If we are going to close, we will announce that by 3 PM on the day of the event. You may have heard of the “planetary parade”   or “planetary alignment” on social media. Well, it is partially true but most of the posts are hype. Both Mercury and Venus have moved into the evening sky but they will be quite low in the west. Saturn and Neptune are also quite low in the west. Objects close to the western horizon are difficult to see because they are only up when the Sun has recently set and they set soon after the Sun. Jupiter and Uranus are the ...