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 and the Moon to them. Those two were bright enough to be visible through the clouds. Venus, Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune were all very close to the western horizon as the Sun was setting. They wouldn’t have been visible even if there weren’t clouds. There are two lessons here: Don’t pay attention to social media hype and check communityobservatory.com after 3 PM before you come to the observatory.

This is a great time of the year to view deep sky objects. Great targets include the bright nebulae near Orion, the Whirlpool and Andromeda Galaxies, and the Beehive and Pleiades Star Clusters. Today’s image is of the “Broken Heart Star Cluster” which is designated as NGC 2281. It was taken by me from Placerville this week.

“NGC” stands for “New General Catalogue” and it is a list of 7,840 interesting deep sky objects compiled in 1888. It is a successor to the “Messier Catalogue” which is a list of 110 of the brightest objects compiled a century earlier.  Most of the deep sky objects that we show you at the Community Observatory come from the Messier Catalogue. You may want to mark your calendar for March 21st. We will be holding a “Messier Marathon” where our team will attempt to see 109 of the 110 objects on the Messier List in a single night. This coincides with our regular Saturday night public viewing. You may come and see us at work from 9-11 PM. If you are an astrophotographer, we invite you to participate with us from sunset until sunrise. Please let us know through the “Contact Us” option on our website and we will give you more details.

Many of you know about our Solar Programs. We have some special telescopes that allow you to safely view the activity on our favorite star. We meet at the Museum of Science and Curiosity in the Winter, but we go back to the Sherwood Demonstration Garden (next to the Community Observatory) for the rest of the year. We will be at the garden this Saturday from 10 AM until noon. One special thing is that we will be giving out free Solar Glasses. Join us and get yours.

So join us!

·       Public Viewing - Friday and Saturday night 7:30-9:30 PM

·       Solar Saturday - Saturday Morning 10 AM - Noon

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