A busy week

We opened the observatory yesterday during the middle school open house.

We had about 30 visitors.

This was the forth evening in a row that I opened up HJRO.

A pattern seems to emerge when you have a large group of daytime or early evening visitors. Some will ask, "will you be open later tonight?". I often say, yes and stay late. They say, we will try to make it back out, but they usually are busy with the normal household chores of going to bed or watching tv. Probably thinking, we have to get up in the morning for work, etc. And we were already there. So they end up never returning the same evening. It's perfectly understandable. I end up observing wIth no more visitors that night.

After four days opening up, I'm a bit tired out at being at HJRO, so tonight, I won't be there, even if the skies are perfect.

There is a full moon, second one this month which is called a blue moon. It won't be any more blue than normal. It's just a second full moon in the month.

A full moon makes the sky bright. Any moon above the horizon makes the sky bright. That makes it difficult to view dim objects from added sky glow. So many astronomers prefer to view other objects when the moon has set or isn't out as well. So a full moon doesn't mean it's a good time to observe the sky. Observing a full moon is more of a chore as well, you will want to use filters to cut down on the brightness when looking through a telescope and there is no shadow relief from a sun angled at the face of the moon we'd be observing.

In heard from visitors that two people in Lincoln Park came down with West Nile virus from mosquito bites recently. It's a good idea to use bug spray before observing.




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