What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? (September 26-27, 2025)

This should be an excellent weekend under the stars! The crescent Moon will be about 20% illuminated on Friday and almost 30% on Saturday. It will set around 9 PM on Friday and just before 10 pm on Saturday. The weather is likely to be clear. This is our last weekend on our Summer schedule of 9:00-11:00 PM. We return to our 7:30-9:30 PM Winter schedule next weekend.

The Autumn sky is rotating into view. The Summer triangle is moving to the west. The Milky Way is directly overhead as it is getting dark. It was magnificent during the New Moon last weekend and should still be visible after moonset this weekend. The Great Square of Pegasus is the asterism that will dominate the sky this time of year. The Andromeda Galaxy is to the Northeast of Pegasus. My view of it through a small telescope 50 years ago ignited my love for astronomy. The Pegasus Globular Cluster is known as M15 and it’s 100,000 tightly grouped stars make it an impressive sight.

The two most recognizable asterisms of the northern sky are the Big Dipper and the “W” shaped Cassiopeia. These never set from our latitude but they rotate around Polaris. They are approximately opposite each other in the sky. Many of you know that the two stars on the blunt end of the dipper line up with Polaris. We call them the “pointer stars.” If you continue that line, it will take you to Cassiopeia which is rising from the East now. The constellation Perseus is just East of Cassiopeia now. It is home to the magnificent “Double Cluster” which is one of this week’s images. These are two tightly packed open-clusters made of young energetic stars. They are about 7,500 light years away and are naked-eye visible from a very dark sky.

We saw the Pleiades Star Cluster for the first time this season last Saturday. It rose shortly before our 11 PM closing. This group of hot bluish stars is 444 light years away. Most people see six or seven stars but there are actually hundreds in this open cluster. It will be visible again this weekend. Unfortunately, it won’t be visible during our public viewings for a month or so after that because we switch to our earlier winter hours next week.

We will continue to have other great deep sky targets as well. Expect to see a supernova in a distant galaxy, some beautiful nebulae, and star clusters.

Saturn is still putting on a show and you might even get a view of Neptune this weekend. Neptune is only a slightly bluish star that is hard to distinguish from the stars around it. Impressive? Not so much. What is impressive is that you will be viewing our most distant planet that is thirty times further from the Sun as we are. You will be among the fewer than 1% of humanity that has seen it.

NASA’s “Observe the Moon Night” is a week from Saturday on October 4th. We will have special activities for young and old that night. Plan on making it a family night at the observatory.

Please, as always, check our calendar on communityobservatory.com for last-minute closures before you come. Come prepared to pay $2 to the college for parking.