Had fun at hjro

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HJRO will be open at 7pm tonight

I'm heading over to open up the observatory.

Getting a shake at white castle before opening up.


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Some Faac members at fort street brewery after Tonights observatory tour

Having dinner after a fun night showing off the observatory and telescopes.

We had over 100 visitors a great mix of people.




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Today we will have a tour of the observatory for middle school science fair attendees

There is a science fair at the middle school. We will be having. Groups of people able to tour the observatory and hopefully look through telescopes today from 6:30 to 7:30pm. Faac astronomers will be present with telescopes outside of the observatory.


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If I open up HJRO tonight it will be very late after midnight

There is a small chance I'll open up HJRO observatory.

Earlier in the evening I'll be observing at a different location with a few Faac members.

Skies will be better late at night but I may be to tired to open up by then and it's cold out.

Check the next post for more details.




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Fun night observing

We all seemed to have a fun time observing last night.

We could really feel the cold and Art and Brian went out and picked up hot chocolates for many of us who were staying late and in need of a warm up.

Below is a photo of many of the visitors at the observatory. I missed getting a picture of Jennifer and her son who were visiting earlier in the evening. We had ten visitors in all. More details will be out possibly in a newsletter clip in the Faac newsletter later.

We didn't see comet Garradd and m92. It was too low while many were there and when it finally rose up high enough at nearly 2am, Art and I were the only members left to try to view the comet and star cluster. A cloud bank and haze obscured the comet and cluster and we could not see through the cloud bank and make out either one of them by that time.

Most visitors saw the moon, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, m42, m45, and the andromeda galaxy. We looked through the C14, Meade refractor, the vixen bt80 binocular telescope, and Big Bertha a ten inch Schmidt Newtonian reflector. At times I had to aim big Bertha fairly unconventionally because I'd didn't have the wrench to move the tube and rotate it for comfortable viewing.

We didn't stay up late enough to see Saturn. I doubt the comet would be visible by 4am because of more clouds moving in.

I think we felt more of the effects of the cold because we were outside on the cement and our feet would get colder. We turned on the IR heater and had a heating pad on one chair. That helped a little, but we still grew cold, many could have dressed warmer and perhaps with warmer boots. The IR heater didn't seem to affect viewing badly at all and we didn't notice problems with viewing from the IR heater. The shutter of the dome was often not over the chair and heating pad so that caused no thermal viewing issues. Not a bad night, considering the cold. Conditions were not horrible but it was frigid out. Later heavy frost started to coat the instruments we had outside the observatory.







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Tonight there may be limited viewing opportunities at HJRO

We have Hfcc astronomy club members arriving at about 8pm for viewing.

I also invited the Faac club out so we might have sone additional telescopes and astronomers on site.

We will probably have room for occasional visitors to show up and take a look. We hope to see comet Garradd p2009 at about 9pm. We may take sone photos of it as well as it will be close to m92 tonight.

The moon will be up until late tonight and may hinder sone of the viewing. But of course we can look at the noon as well.

Visitors are welcome but you should dress warmly in layers.


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