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

 

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

With the full Moon falling on Saturday Night and some cloud cover predicted, this may not be the best weekend for your first trip to the Community Observatory. White light is the enemy of good nighttime seeing. Even a short glimpse of white light can suppress your night vision for twenty minutes. That is why we try to limit the light at the observatory to red or green. The one brilliant white light that we can’t control is the Moon. The number of stars that can be seen on a full moon night is a fraction of the ones you can see when there is no moon.

Nevertheless, there will still be things to see. Both Saturn and Neptune will be visible in our scopes. Neptune is a dim blueish speck in even our biggest scopes. We often joke that we could pick almost any star and tell the public that it is Neptune. We don’t do that, however. We try to center the blue dot in our scope and make it easy for you to find. It isn’t visually spectacular but it is conceptually spectacular. You are viewing an object that is thirty times as far away as the Earth is from the Sun. That is almost three billion miles. It takes light about 4 hours to get there.

Saturn is much more impressive. If the sky is clear, you will be able to not only the famous rings but the gap between the rings and the planet. You may be able to see bands of clouds on  the surface of the planet, Saturn has 293 confirmed moons including Titan which is bigger than the planet Mercury and which has a very dense atmosphere made up mostly of Nitrogen. Methane acts like water here on Earth. It congregates in oceans and evaporates to form clouds which “rain” liquid methane. An interesting thought is that the thick atmosphere and low gravity would allow a human with artificial wings to fly on Titan. NASA has plans to launch the Dragonfly probe to Titan in 2028. The probe, which will arrive there is 2034 will be an eight-rotor nuclear-powered drone which will fly and explore the features and chemistry of this unique moon.

The Moon itself is impressive during its full phase. My favorite crater is Tycho, named for the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe who was famous for making the most accurate measurements of the positions of stars and planets before the invention of the telescope. The Crater Tycho is young at only about 108 million years. Its bright rays are made of ejecta, rock and dust thrown out by the impact of the asteroid that caused it. These rays extending almost a thousand miles lie over the top of older craters and their ejecta. These are most visible during the full moon. The image today is NASA’s picture of Crater Tycho.

You can still expect to see some amazing deep-sky objects in spite of the Moon’s light. The most impressive of these is the Andromeda Galaxy. It is the closest full-sized galaxy to the Milky Way. Other amazing galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae should still be visible.

Be sure to check our public calendar on our website after 3 PM on the day you choose to visit to make sure we don’t have a weather closure. Expect to pay $2 to park.

 

 

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