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What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend?

 

Happy Halloween! We will be hosting a spooky sky night on Friday with costumes and candy for the kids. We will have a special slide show featuring some spooky deep sky objects. Costumes are optional. The image today is the “Ghost Nebula.”

 

We are expecting a gibbous waxing moon this weekend.  The full Harvest Moon falls next Wednesday so the moon for both this and next weekend will be quite bright. Nevertheless, clear, cold skies are expected. We should still see some excellent objects. Bring your jacket and a knit cap.

 

Our big tarmac scopes will give some excellent high-power views of the gibbous moon. The craters and mountains on the moon will be sharply defined. Saturn is also magnificent in our scopes. Expect to see its edge-on rings. It looks like a line through the center of the planet rather than a ring. This is a phenomenon that occurs every 15 years as the rings align with the “ecliptic.” The ecliptic is the plane in which the planets reside in as they circle the Sun. You can think of it as a disk that extends from the Sun’s equator.  

 

There are currently two comets visible in the evening sky. Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) was discovered in January. It has a long period of 1,339 years and will travel well beyond the orbit of Pluto before it returns again. It was magnificent last week but it will still be visible in the Northwest after sunset. The Comet c/2025 R2 (SWAN) was discovered in September.  It has an orbital period of “only” 802 years. It is not as impressive as Lemmon but it does have a beautiful green tint caused by diatomic carbon and cyanogen gasses that are being excited by ultraviolet light from the sun.

 

The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is bright enough and well positioned so that it will still be easily visible in our scopes. The impressive Pegasus Globular (M15) will also be on display, The Pleiades Star Cluster (M45) will become visible after about 8:30.

 

We have solar viewing at the Museum of Science and Curiosity between 10:00 AM and Noon on Saturday. We will have two types of scopes. Our “white-light” scopes display the Sun in its natural color with 99.99+ plus percent of the light filtered out. It is excellent for showing sunspots and other features on the Sun’s surface. Our Hydrogen Alpha (H-alpha) telescopes are a specialized solar telescopes that isolate a narrow slice of red light—specifically at 656.28 nanometers—allowing you to observe dramatic solar features like prominences, filaments, and flares on the Sun.

 

Join us either Friday or Saturday between 7:30 and 9:30. We aren’t expecting weather to be an issue this weekend but you should still check communityobservatory.com after 3 PM on the day you want to attend to be sure we will be open.

 

 

 

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